APEC rapid growth costs environmental demage: Critics

APEC rapid growth costs environmental demage: Critics

TORONTO (AFP): Stunning economic growth in many Asia Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies has been achieved at the
cost of severe environmental degradation, environmentalists
warned here yesterday.

Rapid growth based on fostering trade and investment with
developed countries, mainly the United States and Japan, has made
East Asia the world's economic dynamo and raised the standard of
living of millions of its people.

But critics point to a 1995 World Bank study cautioning that
"if unchecked the pace of the environmental damage from pollution
and over-extraction of renewable resources threatens to
compromise the welfare gains from higher incomes."

In a study released at the APEC environment ministerial
conference here, the California-based Nautilus Institute for
Security and Sustainable Development deplored the lack of
effective institutional mechanisms to coordinate APEC's "myriad
environmental projects."

The projects cover energy and tourism, sustainable cities and
clean production technologies, food security and marine
conservation.

"Despite APEC's stated commitment to 'sustainable
development', environmental and macro-economic policy tracks
remain largely separate, both within individual APEC economies
and in APEC as an institution," the authors of the study, Lyuba
Zarsky and Jason Hunter, said.

The anti-APEC Action Network here meanwhile said APEC "means
cheap wages, anti-union policies, easy access to natural
resources and lax or non-existent labor, environmental and human
rights standards."

Environmentalists say regional cooperation should focus on
three main areas: air, atmospheric and water pollution,
especially those related to energy production and use; resource
degradation; and demographic shifts, food security and
urbanization.

The energy issue is perhaps the most pressing for both
developed and developing economies within APEC, which was founded
in 1989.

Projected high rates of economic growth in East Asia over the
next 20 to 50 years will fuel a sharp hike in energy demand,
likely to be based on fossil fuels, including high-sulfur and/or
carbon-emitting coal, the study by the Nautilus Institute said.

Energy-related air pollution, especially "acid rain" induced
by sulfur emissions from power plants in northern China, is
already among the most severe pollution problems in Northeast
Asia, it added.

Sulfur dioxide emissions in Asia as a whole are projected to
outstrip those in Europe and North America by the year 2000.

Rapid growth in coal-based energy as well as motorized urban
transport are also blamed for large increases in greenhouse gas
emissions in Asia, which as a whole will account for 30 percent
of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions at the end of the decade.

Problems of energy demand also affect developed APEC members
such as the United States, Canada and Australia, which are among
the world's highest per capita carbon emitters.

In addition to air and atmospheric pollution, APEC economies
are also beset by high rates of resource degradation. East Asia
is said to have the world's highest rate of deforestation and
loss of original habitat. According to the Asian Development
Bank, the region's timber reserves will be depleted in less than
40 years.

The marine environment and fisheries, both coastal and
offshore, are also under severe stress in many APEC countries.

Compounding the problems are demographic factors, including
population growth -- Asia's population is projected to rise from
3.4 billion in 1995 to 4.9 billion in 2025 --, rural-urban
migration and urbanization.

By 2015, the APEC region will have 13 megacities of more than
eight million people and 112 cities with 1.5 million and eight
million people, officials said.

APEC members are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong
Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New
Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand
and the United States.