[asia-apec 387] IPS: Asia-Pacific: Growth Won't Be Green Under APEC Free Trade

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/* Written 10:13 PM  Mar 29, 1997 by newsdesk in igc:apec.general */
/* ---------- "IPS: ASIA-PACIFIC: Growth Won't Be" ---------- */
       Copyright 1997 InterPress Service, all rights reserved.
          Worldwide distribution via the APC networks.

                      *** 20-Mar-97 ***

Title: ASIA-PACIFIC: Growth Won't Be Green Under APEC Free Trade

By Johanna Son

MANILA, Mar 20 (IPS) - Free trade in the Asia-Pacific is likely to
cause even greater damage to the enviornment as the economic
growth of region's economies accelerates.

East Asia's economic power houses have enriched themselves at a
heavy cost to nature, and it has long been evident that such
growth is not sustainable.

The Bangkok-based Focus On The Global South, in a report for
the 'Rio Plus Five' conference on the environment that ended
Wednesday in Brazil, said free trade conflicts with long-term
environmental concerns.

''The rapid industrialisation of the Asia-Pacific region has
produced an environmental situation that can only be described as
bordering on crisis,'' said the report written by Walden Bello and
Nicola Bullar of Focus.

Yet the governments of 18 Asia-Pacific economies are pursuing
efforts to institutionalise free trade within the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

Formed in 1989, APEC spans North and Latin America to South-
east Asia and Pacific and aims to tear down all barriers to trade
and investment by the year 2020.

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

APEC was meant to be a loose consultative forum aimed at
discussing not only freeing up trade but pursuing technical and
development cooperation. But pressures from the industrialised
economies are pushing APEC to focus more on its free trade goal,
despite doubts by developing member economies.

In the process the environment is not getting enough attention,
despite rhetoric among APEC members about integrating
''sustainable development'' concerns in their discussions, said
the report called 'APEC And The Environment: A Report To The Rio
+Five Conference'.

Focus concludes that APEC is an unlikely vehicle for nature-
friendly growth,  or for reconciling its aims of freer trade and
investment with environmental protection..

''The body's (APEC) commitment to preserving the environment in
the Asia-Pacific is largely rhetorical and has not been backed up
by effective programmes,'' it said.

Most of East Asia's tiger economies have paid a high price for
their  industrialisation in the last three decades, making their
cities extreme health hazards.

South Korea's industrialisation is largely responsible for
filthy air in Seoul, which has one of the world's highest sulphur
dioxide levels. Focus cited studies showing that cancer rates have
doubled in Taiwan since 1960 and that children in Bangkok have
among the highest levels of lead in blood due to air pollution.

A large number of Asia's rivers are degraded or dead, even as
its capitals race to build the highest skyscrapers and the biggest
shopping malls. In China, up to 30 percent of the agricultural
land are degraded, lost to erosion or converted into urban real
estate since the 1950s.

Deforestation remains a concern in many South-east Asian
countries, and this year's 'State of the World's Forests' report
says tropical Asia-Oceania still has the highest rates for forest
loss at nearly one percent a year.

And as Asia strives to catch with the industrialised economies
of the world, it is also producing more greenhouse gases. The
region's carbon dioxide emissions are expected to rise from the
current 25 percent of global production to 36 percent by 2025.

Some of these concerns--from the liveability of cities to the
state of the marine environment--were discussed in meetings
leading up the 1996 APEC summit in the Philippines and endorsed by
President Fidel Ramos, who was APEC chair last year.

At one point, Ramos said: ''We finally stand on the threshold
of unprecedented growth and change. That threshold--unless we
watch our step and look when we cross--could very well be the
brink of environmental disaster.''

The Manila Summit was dominated by trade concerns, but on a
rhetorical level at least expressed hopes that growth could be
sustainable.

However, these were only ''nice words'' and a subsequent blue
print to spur APEC free trade revealed a gap between talk and

action.

Free trade remains the main driving force of APEC, but the
organisation does not have a fixed forum for discussing the
environmental impact of trade treaties.

Focus traces Asia's environmental malady to its pursuit of the
newly-industrialised country (NIC) development model, which was
followed by the tiger economies and ''places no investment in
pollution control and externalises environmental costs''.

Finally, Focus argues that APEC's potential for looking beyond
free trade and investment is limited by the strong influence
wielded by economic powers like the United States--for which the
top priority is opening up Asian markets.

Says the report: ''The failure of the North to come  up with
even a fraction of the cash to bankroll Agenda 21, which  it
agreed to in Rio five years ago, should forewarn us about
entertaining any illusions about an APEC environmental Marshall
Plan for the Asia-Pacific''. (END/IPS/AP-TR/JS/KD/97)


Origin: New Delhi/ASIA-PACIFIC/
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