Asia Times: Bank takes Asia to task


	June 20, 2001	atimes.com

Asian Crisis

Bank takes Asia to task

WASHINGTON - The Asian Development Bank (ADB), which lacks an environmental policy of its own, is denigrating countries in Asia and the Pacific for their failure to adopt and abide by laws to halt degradation.

In its first Asian Environment Outlook (AEO) report, released on Monday, the ADB says that with only a few exceptions, Asia's "grow now, clean up later approach" has resulted in weak enforcement of environmental laws, the loss of 70-90 percent of original wildlife habitats, and the placing of almost all biodiversity resources under stress.

The region is expected to replace the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries as the world's largest source of greenhouse gas emissions by 2015. Urban populations are expected to triple from their 1990 levels of 360 million to more than 1 billion by 2020, further straining water supply, housing and sanitation.

"The root cause of the poor state of the environment in Asia and the Pacific is failed policies and institutions," Warren Evans, manager of the bank's environmental division said. ''There has been an excessive reliance on centralized, top-down decision-making that excludes civil society. This is compounded by weak enforcement of environmental laws, a lack of political will, corruption, unsustainable exploitation of natural resources for short-term gains, and limited funding for managing the environment."

However, what Evans and the AEO omit is the role that international financiers have played in Asia's environmental degradation. Like its sister organization the World Bank, the ADB has often been chastised for funding huge infrastructure projects such as roads and dams that have displaced thousands of people and harmed the environment.

"Since 1966, the ADB has been operating without an environment policy," says Nurina Widagdo at the Asia desk of the non-governmental Bank Information CentER (BIC). "What they have are 'environmental considerations' for bank projects," which guide funding decisions. So, during the past 35 years, the Bank has invested US$82 billion in 1,550 projects, many of which have been criticized for their failure to incorporate environmental impact assessments or include affected communities in their development.

Only after completion in 1998 did the ADB acknowledge that the 210 megawatt Nam Theun-Hinboun Hydropower Project, which it financed with Swedish and Norwegian partners, has had serious impacts on villagers in Laos. These include flooding and falling fish stocks.

The ADB has been faulted for promoting massive dam projects, such as those spanning six countries in the Mekong River sub-region. The projects cut across Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar and the People's Republic of China and are part of the 50 potential dam projects on the river and its tributaries that the ADB has identified. Running for more than 4,000 kilometers, the Mekong is one of the world's longest rivers.

Evans said the ADB is currently drafting its own environmental policy, and the AEO, which will be released every two years, seeks to provide a policy baseline for future ADB activities.

The report says about 70 percent of Metro Manila's population has no septic tank or wastewater treatment. Vietnam has lost 50 percent of its mangrove forests and 67 percent of 388 cities monitored in China by the World Health Organization in 1999 failed to meet national air quality standards.

"In countries where environmental policies are good on paper, there is a lack of political will to implement them," said Evans, adding that politicians remain reluctant to eliminate subsidies on energy and water that, in the bank's view, have a distorting effect on prices and lead to unsustainable use of such resources.

"Over the last generation, the region has experienced tremendous economic growth and it has achieved very significant reductions in poverty," says Peter Kimm of the US-Asia Environmental Partnership, an initiative to promote exports of US "clean energy" technology to Asia under the aegis of the US Agency for International Development. "But, over the same period, the environment has gotten worse. It does not take rocket science to realize that drastic steps need to be taken," says Kimm.

The AEO recommends that governments set realistic standards, improve enforcement, devolve powers to line ministries to enable them to act on important environmental decisions, and use sub-regional approaches to solve common problems.

The report notes that currently, stand-alone agencies are responsible for environmental protection in many countries in the region but they lack the ability to place environmental concerns on the policy agenda.

Report highlights
Over the past four decades, the Asia and Pacific region's rich resources have undergone dramatic changes resulting from accelerated economic and social transformation. Economic changes such as large increases in population, agricultural output, industrial production and capital, and advances in science and technology have transformed the region's natural resource base, both as a source of material inputs and as a sink for pollution and other negative outputs associated with economic activity.

Environmental degradation in the region is pervasive, accelerating, and unabated. At risk are people's health and livelihoods, the survival of species, and ecosystem services that are the basis for long-term economic development. Economic development and poverty reduction efforts are increasingly constrained by environmental concerns, including degradation of fisheries and forests, scarcity of fresh water, and poor human health as a result of air and water pollution. Intensified crop and livestock production combined with misdirected incentives have contributed to increased production of chemical and organic wastes (and accompanying health risks), natural resource and biodiversity loss, and soil erosion.

By 1985, countries in the region had already lost 70-90 percent of their original wildlife habitat to agriculture, infrastructure development, deforestation, and land degradation (MacKinnon and MacKinnon 1986). The most severe losses have been in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. The Philippines and Vietnam have lost about 70 and 50 percent of their mangrove forests, respectively, and 75 percent of the Asia and Pacific region's marine protected areas are considered to be under high potential threat from coastal development (WRI 1998). Tropical forests are of particular concern because of high rates of species richness and endemism. Wilson (1998) estimates that roughly 40 percent of land that can support closed tropical forests is now devoid of forest cover, primarily as a result of human actions. Forest cover is declining at a rate of approximately 1 percent per year.

Pressure on the land in Asia is the most severe in the world. Particularly affected are the region's rural poor who are dependent on agriculture and its ancillary activities. Many countries in the region already face an acute shortage of productive land resources that can support its growing population. In 1990, approximately 850 million hectare had some degree of land degradation, representing more than 28 percent of the region's land area. According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), there are 350 million ha of degraded land in India, Pakistan, and People's Republic of China, most of which are grasslands (UNEP 1999). About 1.32 billion people, or 39 percent of the region's population, live in areas prone to drought and desertification (UNEP 1997).

Lack of an adequate supply of clean water, the most severe environmental problem in many parts of the region, impacts human health and slows the development of economies. The explosive growth in populations and economies has had the greatest impact on the region's fresh water resources. Fresh water withdrawals increased more in Asia during the past century than in any other part of the world, and these withdrawals have resulted in water supply and water quality problems. Water utilization rates will increase further in many other parts of the region in the next quarter century as populations and economies grow. Subsidies exacerbate the problem by encouraging the expansion of inefficient supply systems and by discouraging demand-side behavior that would improve water delivery services.

In addition, water quality has been steadily fouled by sewage, industrial effluent, urban and agricultural runoff, and saline intrusion. Levels of suspended solids in the region's rivers almost quadrupled since the late 1970s (ADB 1997), and rivers typically contain four times the world average and 20 times the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)-recommended levels of suspended solids (UNEP 1996). Biochemical oxygen demand, a key indicator of overall water quality, is 1.4 times the level recommended by OECD. The fecal coliform level, an indicator of the health risk from human waste, is three times the world average and 50 times higher than the level recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO). As a result, one in three Asians has no access to a safe drinking water source that operates at least part of the day within 200 meters of the home. Access to safe drinking water is worst in South and Southeast Asia, where almost one in two Asians has no access to sanitation services and only 10 percent of sewage is treated at a primary level (ADB 1997). Air pollution levels in the region's large cities are among the highest in the world and climbing, causing serious human health impacts. Of the 15 cities in the world with the highest levels of particulate matter, 12 are located in the Asia and Pacific region.

Of the 15 cities in the world with the highest levels of sulfur dioxide, six are located in Asia. In most of the region's large cities, pollution levels exceed WHO guidelines by wide margins. The region's emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides in 2030 are projected to be three to four times their 1990 levels (UNEP 1999). Unlike the effects of water pollution, which are borne mainly by the poor, no resident of any major city in the region is safe from the effects of air pollution. However, the poor are disproportionately exposed to air pollution, living along roads and the industrial areas, thus suffering the highest concentration of air pollutants.

The Asia and Pacific region is by far the world's largest consumer of wood fuels, accounting for nearly 44 percent of global consumption (FAO 2000). Wood fuels pose a number of air quality and human health problems. According to WHO, indoor air pollution from biomass smoke is one of the largest environmental risk factors for ill health of any kind. Four to 5 million deaths among children are attributed to acute respiratory infection each year. Studies in India, Nepal, and Papua New Guinea show that nonsmoking women who have cooked on biomass stoves for many years exhibit a higher prevalence of chronic lung diseases than nonsmoking women who do not cook on biomass stoves.

These studies also revealed a 50 percent increase in stillbirths in women exposed to indoor smoke during pregnancy in Western India (World Bank 2000). Industrial growth and urban expansion have greatly contributed to and increased the generation and accumulation of solid and hazardous wastes in many DMCs, outrunning the collection efficiency and disposal capacity of many municipalities. Kolkata, which generates about 2,500 metric tons of waste per day, has developed effective collection and disposal systems that capture 95 percent of the waste stream. Most cities collect 70-80 percent of solid wastes, leaving an average of about 1,000 tons per day uncollected in cities such as Manila and Jakarta. Cities such as Dhaka and Karachi collect less than 50 percent. The balance ends up in drains and rivers, exacerbating flooding, or in vacant lots or roadsides, where it impacts public health by providing habitat for rodents, flies, and other disease vectors.

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 2000). Urban air pollution exacts a heavy toll on human health and the quality of urban life. For example, 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. Pollution-related health problems in the region are one of the world's most serious public health problems.

Conclusions
Based on exploration of the environmental symptoms plaguing the Asia and Pacific region, environmental trends are alarming and previous institutional and policy approaches appear to have had limited success. But trends can be changed! The region still has the opportunity to follow a different economic-environmental pathway, one that builds a clean urban-industrial economy from the bottom up and avoids much of the costly, inefficient, and embattled institutional and technological experience of industrialized countries. In much of the developing countries of the Asia and Pacific region, affordable options are still available to prevent long-term or permanent damage to most natural resources and the urban environment.

Abundant opportunities exist to redirect the underlying driving forces of change, create new and effective institutions, establish markets for ecosystem services where none exist today, and integrate environmental policies into mainstream economic planning and management. Only then a sustainable future for the Asia and Pacific region can be realized.

The AEO Series identifies a future focused on policies that integrate environmental concerns with economic development to reduce poverty, improve environmental quality, and support sustainable livelihoods for all people in the region. In this context, an abiding political will is essential to translate rhetoric into action. Political will, policy integration, and development by design will become meaningless slogans unless all stakeholders act in concert to ensure long-term sustainable development in the region. The potential result is development that conforms with the principles of natural capitalism, exhibits concern for the long-term stability of the environment, and leads to meaningful social development.

ADB anticipates that AEO 2001 and future AEO Series reports will be able to document the positive changes occurring in the Asia and Pacific region, thereby making a real difference. Nothing less than our collective future depends on it.

(Asia Times Online/Inter Press Service)

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