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in the region were not only outdated but pollution-intensive,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.