Catalog

Saving Asia's Environment

New approaches are needed to halt Asia's rapid environmental decline. Will countries muster the political will to change before time runs out?

Environmental degradation in the Asian and Pacific region is pervasive, accelerating, and unabated, putting at risk people’s health and livelihood and hampering the economic growth needed to reduce the level of poverty in the region.

This is the scenario depicted by the Asian Environment Outlook 2001 (AEO), released in mid-2001 by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). AEO provides in-depth analyses of the environmental issues facing the region, as well as a workable framework to improve the environment and reduce poverty.

According to AEO, Asia’s economic development over the past few decades has come at a high environmental cost.

• By 2020, more than half of Asia’s population is likely to live in cities, with the urban population tripling to more than a billion in 2020 from 360 million in 1990, further straining an already inadequate infrastructure for water supply, housing, and sanitation.
• The region has already lost up to 90 percent of its original wildlife habitat to agriculture, infrastructure, deforestation, and land degradation.
• One in three Asians lacks access to safe drinking water within 200 meters of home, with South and Southeast Asia suffering the most.
• The region is expected to replace the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries as the world’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions by 2015.
• Air pollution is a major cause of respiratory ailments and premature death in several Asian cities.

The poor, particularly children and women, suffer most from the accelerating urban and rural environmental degradation. Asia is home to two thirds of the world’s poor. “The poor are often most directly dependent upon forests, fisheries, and other natural resources threatened by depletion and degradation,” says Rolf Zelius, Chief of ADB’s Office of Environment and Social Development. “The poor are especially vulnerable to lack of access to clean water and inadequate sanitation systems.”

Declining environmental quality and continued dependence on natural resources are constraining the economic growth that is needed to reduce poverty in the region over the next 20 years, the report says.

With only a few exceptions, Asia’s “grow now, clean up later approach” has resulted in a long list of institutional, policy, and governance failures, says AEO. The separation of economic growth from environmental concerns has led to

• excessive reliance on centralized, top-down approaches;
• inadequate participation of civil society in environmental management;
• weak enforcement;
• corruption;
• market distortions; and
• limited funding for environmental management.

Yet, as AEO points out, economic productivity and environmental improvement are not mutually exclusive, but can go hand in hand, with significant improvements achievable at low cost. The costs of remedying policy failures can be relatively low, and can simultaneously produce major environmental benefits.

The report identifies three core elements of a new approach to meet ADB’s vision of a region where consumption is based on services rather than ownership or assets; ecosystems and biodiversity are valued and protected; and environmental management is decentralized, participatory, and effective.

Environmental and development policies must be integrated at national and regional levels. Currently, a stand-alone agency is usually responsible for environmental protection but often lacks the authority to put environmental concerns high on policy agendas.

Development by design should guide sustainable development. This means guiding urban and industrial development according to publicly accepted and integrated environmental and economic development plans.

A strong political will is essential to translate environmental rhetoric into actions. This means a minimum level of environmental compliance, adequate budget and human resources, access to information and public participation, as well as eliminating subsidies that aggravate resource degradation.

“As the region’s capacity to support human activity becomes increasingly stressed, policymakers and leaders will discover that integrated solutions that transcend traditional disciplines and approaches are clearly more effective than parochial solutions that divide regions, institutions, infrastructure, and technology,” AEO concludes.

AEO 2001 is the first in a biennial series. It will be followed by background reports on various environmental themes and reports on issues facing individual countries.

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