ASEAN adopts green plan to cope with free trade area
ASEAN adopts green plan to cope with free trade area
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN (AFP): Southeast Asia's booming economies adopted yesterday a "green" plan to cope with increased investments and trade arising from their move to set up a free trade area, officials said yesterday.
Under the five-year plan, the six-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) would integrate sound environment policies with the ambitious objectives of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), they said.
The so-called ASEAN Strategic Plan of Action on the Environment, to run until 1998, was adopted after two days of talks by the grouping's environment ministers in Brunei's capital, Bandar Seri Begawan.
ASEAN, comprising Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, launched in January a 15- year program for the implementation of an ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA).
Under the AFTA, tariffs on 15 groups of manufactured products covering 40,000 items would be brought down to as low as zero-to- five percent.
"The process of economic integration in ASEAN, initiated by AFTA, requires that environmental management be mutually supportive for increased trade and not emerge as a non-tariff barrier," Malaysian Environment Minister Law Heing Ding said.
"We need to make projections on the volume of intra-ASEAN trade, the pattern of growth of manufacturing industries, resource-usage, technology requirements and hence their overall impact on the environment," Law said.
The green plan called for the development of a regional framework for integrating environment and development concerns in the decision-making process and beefing up an information data base, according to a joint statement issued at the end of the talks.
The statement said the ASEAN ministers agreed to promote sound management of toxic chemicals and hazardous wastes, and control the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes and their disposal.
Green groups say the environment in most ASEAN countries has taken a beating due to rapid growth.
In many instances, technologies employed in large-scale chemical, petrochemical, metallurgical and electronics industries in the region were not only outdated but pollution-intensive, they charged.
Officials said the ASEAN green plan would be generally self- financed by member countries, adding that environment-related business had become such a profitable venture that market forces could determine adequate investment.