East Asians take insufficient action to clean their skies

Against the background of the Kyoto climate conference, which is now concluding, our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin takes a look at the pollution problems in East Asia, and concludes that while no regional pollution haze threatens, the East Asian nations have absolutely no grounds for complacency.

HONG KONG (JP): Come into land at Hong Kong's Kaitak airport, on one of those increasingly rare clear days when the sky above is blue, and look northwards as the plane begins to descend below 10,000 feet. Very likely a brown-tinged mist or haze will stretch away towards the horizon, covering the area between Hong Kong and Guangzhou (formerly Canton).

Climb The Peak on Hong Kong island and on most days it will probably not be possible to see at first hand an often-ignored geographical fact -- that the territory of Hong Kong has always been completely surrounded by Chinese islands.

These pollution-related facts are unlikely to change and may well get worse no matter what complex compromise is worked out in Kyoto, as the big political guns arrive for the final bargaining sessions of the Third Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (or COP3 for short).

East Asia has experienced nothing quite as bad as the Great Southeast Asian Pollution Haze (GSEAPH), the choking smog which devastated that region's health from July to November, but greenhouse gases are being freely released in East Asia as China, Korea and Taiwan are slow to follow the Japanese example.

The Japanese example to which I am referring is not -- yet -- the fact that Japan has done better than any other Asian nation in diminishing the asphyxiating smogs that inevitably accompany industrialization and development. It will take time for that to happen, especially in China.

The Japanese example worth copying now, in many East Asian cities, is the past practice, way back in the 1960s, of placing a canister of oxygen at heavily polluted street junctions. A whiff of oxygen could be purchased by passers-by for 10 yen (in the days when a US$1 was worth 360 yen).

The main beneficiaries, as I recall, were the traffic policemen, who used to inhale oxygen as a relief from directing the cars and vans which were creating mainly responsible for creating the smog in the first place.

In East Asian cities these days, I frequently think of that small but beneficial example of private enterprise. Unfortunately, while ever major city has learnt how to produce excessive pollution, none, as far as I know, have in this sensible and necessary way learnt from Japan.

Mind you, East Asian private enterprise has some quirky ways of dealing with pollution. A well-connected real estate developer in the city of Lanzhou is busy demolishing a sizable hill which, he claims, keeps local winds from blowing away the heavy haze which lies almost permanently over the city.

The demolition of the hill may or may not solve the pollution problem but it will produce more real estate for the developer to play with. People's lungs might benefit more from strategically placed oxygen tanks.

Pell-mell industrial and economic development may not have had quite the same dramatic effect in East Asia as the forest, peat, and coal fires burning away in Southeast Asia, but it sometimes comes close.

Take that brown haze mentioned at the beginning of this article.

The rice paddy fields which used to be the main scenic backdrop on the rail journey from Kowloon to Canton have long since disappeared. Today construction sites are everywhere apparent alongside the railway. One long unending built-up area is quickly being created.

What is being accomplished between Hong Kong and Guangzhou is the same as what the Japanese have done long ago between Tokyo and Osaka, or what the Taiwanese have been doing between Taipei and Kaoshiung, and the Koreans between Seoul and Pusan. It is said to be progress -- but that brown mist, which already exists, is a pointed reminder that "development" comes with costs, some of which it would be better to avoid paying.

To argue, as the Chinese and others do, that the duty to sustain development must now come first is understandable. But to argue, as the Chinese and other developing countries appear to be doing, on the additional right to create pollution, thereby endangering human lives and living, is inexplicable.

Of course the brown haze or mist on the Hong Kong-Guangzhou corridor is both the cause of deterioration in air quality, as well as the result of the deterioration that has already taken place. At times in Hong Kong -- and particularly in parts of the Kowloon district opposite Hong Kong island -- the need for street-sited oxygen tanks has been very apparent.

Visiting the Kwun Tong industrial district, for example, has been, for long, a choking experience, not to mention the accompanying evil smells. But of late Kwun Tong's air has improved, as the area has moved up market, with new office buildings replacing the old factory towers.

Pollution is being reduced, in other words, by market forces as industries move away, due to Hong Kong's high labor costs, and as the Hong Kong economy becomes more and more reliant on services rather than manufacturing.

Unfortunately, this movement does not necessarily diminish the brown haze, since the best source of cheap labor is nearby in China. Hong Kong, like Japan, and Taiwan, can be accused of exporting pollution to China -- except that the Chinese government is currently more concerned to employ its 1.2 billion people and worries less about the air they may be breathing as a result.

Japan has done a fair job of reducing and controlling pollution (it is a long time since one could see factories around Tokyo belching black or brown smoke) but Hong Kong has been slow to move in the same direction. The smart new double decker buses do not belch the same brown fumes as the older models did and do, but construction companies are still particularly prone to still use machinery which emits noxious exhaust fumes.

For years, any jet landing at Kaitak would be quickly filled with a most obnoxious smell, due to sewage-filled nullah adjacent to the runway. That problem appears to be fixed but only last week a similar smell hit my nostrils in another corner of the harbor not far from the architectural dazzle of the new convention center.

It has only been relatively recently, during the last British governor's term of office, that the Hong Kong government has sought to limit and control the vast amount of untreated sewage which for many years has been dumped straight into the harbor.

There used to be an annual cross-harbor swimming contest. That has been abandoned for several years due to the high risk of all contestants developing conjunctivitis, or other complaints, as a result of the pollution. Similarly, the number of Hong Kong beaches diminishes where the water has a bacterial level low enough to make the beach safe for swimming.

The beaches are in any case too often obstructed by the plastic bags and styrofoam products, beloved of fast food outlets, which are left floating in the harbor, as people dump rubbish the easy way.

The biggest threat remains the quality of the air --and that frequently-present brown haze. Once upon a time, it was often possible to see the many Chinese islands which stretch away to the horizon south of Hong Kong. No longer. There are very few days now when the air is so crystal clear and visibility is as far as the eye can see.

Despite these afflictions, Hong Kong is a far tidier place and seems to take greater care of its environment than either Seoul or Taipei. But the latter two cities certainly appear to be making greater efforts to limit pollution than most of the great cities of China.

In China, development at all costs is king, and pollution problems are being left to take care of themselves in what must be a classic example of a "penny wise, pound foolish" policy. Chungking (Chongqing) in Sichuan province can lay claim to be the pollution capital of the world -- though some would give that honor to Beijing.

So while no GSEAPH threatens East Asia, the regional menace, posed by insufficient strictures and restrictions on the bye- products of economic development, is very real.

Whatever the conclusions of the Kyoto conference, East Asian nations can only ignore pollution and the degradation of the environment at their peril. But that is precisely what they are doing.