From Investment Zones to Climate Clusters: Rewiring Governance and Public-Private Collaboration for Southeast Asia's Semiconductor Net-Zero Transition

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a novel normative framework for studying climate governance in global supply chains, with testable hypotheses for cluster-level decarbonization.

🏢実務担当者:Offers concrete mechanisms (Cluster Climate Compacts, Climate-Aligned PPPs) for semiconductor firms and park operators to embed emissions targets into investment decisions.

🏛政策担当者:Highlights the need to integrate climate obligations into trade zone regulations and regional supply chain initiatives like AFISS.

As Southeast Asia emerges as a rising pillar in the global semiconductor supply chain, governance and public-private collaboration around emissions remain under-specified, fragmented, and heavily investment-driven rather than climate-driven. This paper asks: How should governance and public-private collaboration in Southeast Asia's semiconductor clusters be redesigned to align industrial upgrading with credible Scope 1-3 decarbonization pathways? Methodologically, the paper synthesizes recent policy reports, regional strategy documents, and case studies on Malaysia, Vietnam, and Singapore, integrates broader ASEAN energy-transition and PPP literature, and develops a normative governance framework tailored to semiconductor clusters.  The main findings are threefold. First, current governance models-free-trade zones, cluster promotion agencies, and regional initiatives such as the ASEAN Framework for an Integrated Semiconductor Supply Chain (AFISS)-prioritize competitiveness and resilience but lack semiconductor-specific climate obligations, metrics, and enforcement. Second, PPPs that could support low-carbon infrastructure for clusters are still skewed toward conventional energy investments, contributing to rising emissions and insufficiently integrating climate risks into project design. Third, voluntary net-zero commitments and supply-chain pressure from global firms are beginning to "back-door" climate discipline into clusters, but this remains uneven and often excludes local SMEs and communities.  The paper's anticipated contribution is a governance blueprint built around three proposed innovations: (1) Cluster Climate Compacts that link incentives to park-level Scope 1-3 trajectories; (2) Climate-Aligned PPPs where semiconductor parks act as anchor off-takers for additional renewable capacity; and (3) Polycentric Climate Governance that embeds SMEs, local communities, and regional bodies in decision-making and accountability structures. It also advances contrarian arguments: that cluster-first strategies risk locking in carbon-intensive infrastructure, that regional integration can dilute accountability, and that governance overly privileges foreign investors at the expense of domestic upgrading and environmental justice.

• semanticscholar https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6563338first seen 2026-05-05 22:13:29