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p. 8 of 57 BACK | NEXT I. The Changing Environment Economic Transformation State of the Environment in the Region Counting the Toll Looking Ahead II. Driving Forces of Change III. Options and Opportunities IV. Toward Policy Integration V. Call to Action

Asian Environment Outlook 2001 : I. The Changing Environment

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Counting the Toll

People in the Asia and Pacific region have paid a heavy toll for the degradation of the region’s natural environment, a cost measured in human health and economic terms. Natural resource degradation and pollution have far-reaching impacts on the health and welfare of the poor (Qadri 2001). The number of people killed or harmed by pollution is so large and the numbers have been repeated so often that many are anaesthesized by the magnitude of the problem. Suffice it to say that pollution-related health problems in the region are one of the world’s most serious public health problems, one truly worthy of the cliché “crisis” (see Box 1-11).

Deteriorating environmental quality is a leading contributor to poverty in the Asia and Pacific region. Inadequate health conditions caused by poor sanitation, drainage and air quality undermine the ability of the region’s poor to pursue economic opportunities. Illness increases family costs and reduces family incomes. Chronic illness in children inhibits child development and education, and can create life-long vocational problems. The lack of infrastructure for water, waste management and transport in poor communities increases time dedicated by residents to these basic needs and reduces their economic productivity. Floods, smog, and traffic congestion reduce the productivity of entire urban and regional economies.

Urban air pollution exacts a heavy toll on human health and the quality of urban life. Fatalities in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, and Nepal account for about 40 percent of the global mortality in young children caused by pneumonia (WHO 1993). Air pollution in South Asian cities causes nearly 100,000 premature deaths per year and over 1 billion work days of lost or reduced productivity. The PRC’s two largest cities, Beijing and Shanghai, regularly exceed emissions for multiple pollutants by double the safe amount recommended by WHO. Levels of smoke and dust, major causes of respiratory diseases, are frequently measured in PRC cities at levels as high as twice the world average. These levels are as much as five times higher than the norm in most European and North American urban areas. In the PRC’s 11 largest cities, smoke and small particles from burning coal are thought to be the primary cause of more than 50,000 premature deaths and 400,000 new cases of chronic respiratory illness every year. In the city of Shenyang, for example, 17 percent of deaths are attributed to the effects of air pollution (UNDP 2000a). Smoke and dust in large cities and in the region are a major cause of respiratory diseases (see Box 1-12). Smoke and dust in large cities are generally twice the world average and more than five times as high as in Latin America (ADB 1997).

The economic costs of depletion and degradation of ecosystem services undoubtedly are as severe as the direct health impacts, but because they are more difficult to integrate into systems of national accounts, there have been few attempts to quantify these environmental costs in the Asia and Pacific region. These costs include the depletion of subsoil assets (such as minerals and fossil fuels), the effects of soil erosion on agricultural productivity, and a few of the health effects from air and water pollution. Environmental degradation has economic as well as noneconomic costs. These costs manifest in several forms: adverse impacts on human health, loss of productivity, and lower overall well-being (see Box 1-13). In Asia, estimates of economic costs of environmental degradation range from 1-9 percent of a country’s gross national product (GNP), depending on the country and the impacts included in the estimates (ADB 1997). In the PRC, the overall cost of damage to agriculture, production, and natural resources from air and water pollution is estimated to exceed 8 percent of the GDP (World Bank 1997). Noneconomic costs that affect welfare, but not GNP, are even larger, but are often difficult to value (ADB 1997). The GNP estimates should be viewed as rock-bottom minimum estimates of the value of depletion because they are dominated by oil reserves that are easy to measure and because they exclude the vast array of ecosystem services essential to life. More than anything, the estimates reveal our ignorance and the need for wholesale new approaches for collecting, organizing, and synthesizing environmental data.

Some of the most interesting estimates of the economic values of ecosystem services in Asia are related to coastal resources (Cesar 1996) (see Box 1-14). For example, 1 square kilometer (km²) of sustainably managed coral reefs can support the annual food requirements of 2,500 people. Economic values can be divided into use values — direct (goods) and indirect (services) use, and non-use values — option value (future use), bequest value (generational use), and existence value (preservation and knowledge) (White and Cruz-Trinidad 1998). Various environmental economic techniques have been developed to estimate these when standard cost-benefit analyses prove inadequate.

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