ZERI promises more jobs, less pollution

JAKARTA (JP): Technological breakthroughs at the Zero Emissions Research Initiative (ZERI) will help lift productivity and create jobs, a conference was told yesterday.

Heitor Gurgulino de Souza, the rector of the Tokyo-based United Nations University (UNU), said the breakthroughs constituted a major change for the industrial world.

The advancements, which included pollution-free manufacturing, represented a second Green Revolution, de Souza told the international conference on environmental protection.

"(This revolution) is focused on industrial efficiency which offers a new vision for poverty alleviation and economic development using the best and most appropriate technologies," he said.

Indonesian State Minister of Environment Sarwono Kusumaatmadja, in his address to the conference, expounded the benefits of the zero emissions program.

"Through the application of zero emissions, economic growth is achieved and human needs are met with improved efficiency," he said. "While pollution and the consumption of energy and raw materials are reduced."

Both officials were speaking at the opening session of a three-day, third world conference on zero emissions which was opened by President Soeharto here yesterday.

About 250 experts, both local and foreign, are participating in the conference.

Previous world ZERI conferences have been held in the major cities of the industrialized world, including Tokyo in 1995 and last year in Chattanooga, Tennesse in the United States.

ZERI, which was created within the framework of the UNU's Eco Restructuring for Sustainable Development, aims to enlist the best minds to study ways of enabling industries to improve their environmental performance.

It was an attempt by a UN organization to involve the business community in the redesign of manufacturing based on the Zero Emissions concept.

The philosophy underlying the concept, de Souza told the conference, was that "mankind cannot expect the Earth to produce more, human kind must do more with what the Earth produces".

"UNU/ZERI is essentially a cooperative venture between the three worlds of government, business, and academia," he said.

De Souza said the increasing involvement of business in the endeavor could not be underplayed.

"Make no mistake about it -- UNU/ZERI is part of an enormous global business, and one that is growing.

"Already, it is estimated that the market for environmental goods and services exceeds US$400 billion," he said. "By the year 2001, it is projected to grow to over $570 billion."

According to de Souza, the statistics demonstrated that businesses were eager for new opportunities to conserve resources and slash pollution rates.

"They want to make environmental protection not just a cost, but a profit opportunity," he said.

"UNU/ZERI helps to exploit what is perhaps humanity's greatest single resource, its creativity in problem solving."

He said the UNU/ZERI had shown the way for businesses to eliminate waste, generate job opportunities and increase productivity.

"It breaks with the traditional concept that in order to secure higher productivity level, some creation of unemployment must be tolerated, or that with higher growth, some pollution is unavoidable. UNU/ZERI demonstrates that the opposite is true."

Earlier in the conference session, Sarwono said the application of the zero emissions concept in other countries and in various sectors proved that it was not just a theory.

Since its introduction in 1994 in Tokyo, several industries in Namibia, Fiji, Columbia, Malaysia, the United States, Japan, and Indonesia have applied the concepts of ZERI in redesigning their ways of manufacturing.

Indonesia with its many natural resource-based industries such as fruit plantations, bamboo industries, vegetable crude oil industries and pulp and paper industries was believed to be well suited to the ZERI concept. (aan)