Q. | Shouldn't developing countries pour all of their resources into promoting growth, and worry about issues like pollution when they are much wealthier? |
A. | Society suffers real economic costs when pollution fouls the air and water: Many work days are lost to pollution-related illness, fisheries are destroyed, crops are damaged, and production costs rise for industries which must filter dirty air or water to maintain product quality. In addition, of course, families suffer severely from the premature deaths of loved ones. Mounting evidence, reviewed in Chapter One, shows that these pollution-related costs can be very large, and that serious pollution control is often warranted, even in very poor countries. |
Q. | What are the key elements in effective pollution control? |
A. | In the 1990's, environmental policy pioneers in the South have begun developing programs that work under local conditions. Their mounting success highlights five keys to greening industry in poor countries. The first is public information. New programs that publicly disclose both good and bad environmental performers have reduced pollution in very short order. The second is public participation. When communities participate in setting environmental standards, they support the agency that enforces them. Citizens are also salary-earners, so their input to regulation ensures that basic economic interests are respected. The third key is commitment to decent environmental standards for the poor. From Brazil to China, the evidence shows that the brunt of pollution falls on poor, uneducated people. Part of the solution is better environmental education for poor communities, so they can defend their interests more effectively. Where damaging pollution remains severe, however, public intervention can right the balance. The fourth key is benefit-cost analysis. Political leaders move against local pollution when they see that the benefits of control greatly exceed the costs. New evidence shows that as a lifesaving investment, pollution control compares favorably with training doctors and building clinics in highly-contaminated urban areas. The fifth key is the corporate bottom line. Factory managers do not sanction pollution because they enjoy fouling the air and water, but because they are trying to minimize costs. In many developing countries, managers have shown that they can reduce pollution quickly when better policies make clean technology cheaper or pollution more expensive. Where these five keys have been turned, pollution has fallen sharply even in very poor countries.
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Q. | Even if new approaches to regulation are working in some cases, how much can we hope for? Do you seriously think that adoption of the measures advocated in the report will solve the Third World's critical pollution problems? |
A. | As we all know, even the First World is far from solving all of its critical pollution problems. We need effective tools for dealing with these problems under developing-country conditions, and Greening Industry points to some approaches which look very promising. We aren't claiming that these programs represent a panacea, but we think they provide a very good start. The priority task now is to scale them up and encourage more societies to adopt them. |
Q. | A lot of your evidence is drawn from pilot programs applied to a few hundred factories. What are the actual prospects for extending these programs to the national scale? |
A. | Scaling up takes serious investments, and we believe the Bank and other lending institutions can play a useful role in this process. However, we have observed that national and local governments find the means to expand such programs once they have become convinced that they work.
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Q. | The tone of your report is awfully upbeat, despite your own admission that thousands are dying from pollution in developing countries. Don't you think there's some contradiction? |
A. | We don't pretend that the current situation is optimal by any means. However, we are optimistic because we've been able to identify approaches that can make things much better. |
Q. | You spend a lot of time talking about government and community measures in this report, but not much about what the private sector is doing. What's the story on that side? |
A. | Some private firms make laudable attempts to reduce pollution even if they face no pressure to do so. However, market and stockholder pressures force most factory managers to heed the bottom line. In general, we find that pollution falls when appropriate policies affect the bottom line by making pollution control cheaper or pollution more expensive.
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Q. | You admit that a lot of the successful programs you've witnessed have been developed by "policy pioneers" who may move on to other work at some point. What happens to such programs when the founders are no longer there? |
A. | In many of the cases we cite, the pioneers have already moved on. China has been running pollution charges for over twenty years, for example, and the founder of Indonesia's PROPER program is no longer in the environmental agency. If the programs make sense and have popular support, new governments tend to support them. Chapter Six provides a detailed discussion of this issue. |
Q. | Some of your prime examples are drawn from countries like Indonesia and Colombia, which are in constant turmoil at present. Are these programs surviving all the political changes? |
A. | Yes, they have been doing well. We discuss their history and some of the reasons for their continued success in Chapter Six.
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Q. | Industrial pollution is only one of many environmental problems in developing countries, and it isn't even the most serious pollution problem in many areas. Why have you focused this report on it? |
A. | We agree that industrial pollution is only one problem, and have said so in Chapter One of the report. As we note there, our focus reflects the priority assigned to the issue by our colleagues in developing-country environmental agencies. It has also provided our research team with a good opportunity to analyze a wide variety of pollution problems, since industry is the most diverse source of environmental contamination. Please see Chapter Onefor a detailed discussion of this issue. |
Q. | What's really new in this report? |
A. | First, we have been struck by the power of public information as a new force in the world. As the world information economy expands, we expect public-information approaches to assume increasing importance in all countries. Second, we provide a detailed treatment of programs which are actually working in developing countries. Third, we have the first systematic evidence on the determinants of factory-level pollution in developing countries. We could go on, but we would suggest that you visit our NIPR Website for many more details (http://www.worldbank.org/nipr/). |
Q. | Many factory managers claim that stricter enforcement of environmental regulations or imposition of pollution charges will make it uneconomic to run their plants, forcing them to close and lay off their workers. Isn't that too high a price to pay when people in developing countries desperately need jobs? |
A. | Regulatory strictness and pollution charges are not set in stone at some arbitrary level. As we note in Greening Industry, they should be set at a point which balances environmental and economic concerns. Keys to effective regulation in this context are good public information and effective community participation. To find the right balance, the community needs good information about pollution damages and the cost of pollution control. Since community members are also wage-earners, their input to regulation should ensure that regulatory action does not result in bankruptcies and layoffs. |
Q. | A lot of people have criticized the World Bank on environmental issues, and the Bank itself has admitted to past errors. If the Bank has been wrong before, how can we be sure you're right this time? |
A. | We're not asking you to take our word for it. This report is heavily-documented, and you can find links to most of the background materials on our NIPR Website (http://www.worldbank.org/nipr/). In addition, the report focuses primarily on what our colleagues in developing countries are actually doing about pollution. Their new emphasis on pollution control is clear to any serious observer. For direct contact, please go to this page on our NIPR Website: http://www.worldbank.org/nipr/epas.htm. It provides links to most of the world's EPA's: contact names, phone, fax, e-mail, etc. |
Q. | Granted, a few Asian countries seem to have reduced pollution with public disclosure programs. Isn't it possible that their cultures make "shame" a particularly powerful tool? Is there any evidence that public disclosure will work in other developing countries? |
A. | We see the same interest everywhere. Public disclosure is also working in Eastern Europe and Latin America. In our view, the Mexican case is particularly interesting. PROFEPA, the enforcement arm of SEMARNAP, Mexico's Environment Ministry, is now scoring the compliance of regulated factories for public dissemination. INE, another branch of SEMARNAP, is planning to implement a program very much like Indonesia's PROPER program. |
Q. | Isn't it a mistake to charge for pollution when it should simply be stopped? Pollution charges seem to legitimize pollution by making it a "misdemeanor" instead of a crime. |
A. | If pollution is a crime, then unfortunately we are all guilty. Most of our activities as consumers and producers generate waste products which require some form of treatment or disposal. Our most pressing task is to find ways of reducing the damage from waste products as quickly and cost-effectively as possible. Pollution charges have proven to be a very powerful tool in this context. |
Q. | You note that Bank-supported economic policy reforms have created environmental problems in the past. What is the Bank doing to prevent this kind of thing in the future? |
A. | As of last year, the Bank has an Operational Directive which requires serious attention to environmental impacts in Bank-sponsored policy reform programs. In Chapter Seven of Greening Industry, we provide specific suggestions for strengthening this commitment. |
Q. | You say that you support "environmental justice," but then you provide a particular definition which focuses on the problem of poverty. How about marginalized ethnic groups who may bear the brunt of pollution? What ideas do you have for improving their situation? |
A. | Marginalized ethnic groups are frequently poverty-stricken, so our recommended approach will certainly help. But we recognize the potential importance of this issue. That's why we recommend public information and public participation. To the extent possible, we believe that marginalized people should be given a strong voice in determining the quality of their environment. |
Q. | Your pollution projections in Chapter 1 are based on the assumption that some numerical parameters don't change across countries. Do you really think this is reasonable? |
A. | Actually, our projections are based on the assumption that the only constant is change. Our statistical analyses of factory-level pollution have revealed that increases in wages and regulation have proportional impacts on labor use and pollution as societies get richer. Pollution and employment per unit of output drop together, keeping the ratio of pollution to employment approximately constant. Our numerical parameters reflect the apparent stability of this change process. We provide a detailed illustration in Chapter One. |
Q. | If the Chinese government has taken such effective measures to fight pollution, why are 10,000 people still dying every year in just four large cities, as you note in Chapter One? |
A. | China confronts a very serious problem, and the Chinese government recognizes this. Without the regulatory programs which are currently in place, many more people would be getting sick and dying. As we note in Chapter One, even a very conservative economic analysis points to the need for much tighter regulation of damaging pollution. Thousands of our colleagues in China's environmental protection agencies are working on this problem every day. |
Q. | Why do you put such faith in public disclosure of pollution when almost nobody understands the scientific aspects of pollution? Aren't such programs just as likely to panic people or provoke anti-corporate hostility as they are to do any good? |
A. | On the contrary, all the experience with public disclosure to date suggests that it is stabilizing, not de-stabilizing. The reason is simple: People panic when they are surprised by news which has potentially-catastrophic implications for their families. Public information is founded on the opposite philosophy. By giving people full information about pollution risks and the cost of mitigating them, it encourages a long-run perspective and promotes practical approaches to solving real, not imaginary, problems. |
Q. | You've talked a lot about what Third-World policymakers are doing about pollution. What is the World Bank doing about it? |
A. | We have a massive program which includes environmental loans, technical assistance, training, policy dialogue, and publications like Greening Industry. For more details, see Chapter Seven of the report. |
Q. | Even the United States doesn't charge companies for pollution. If the EPA can't or won't employ charges, why should we expect them to work in developing countries? |
A. | First, we should point out that they do work in developing countries. In Greening Industry, we cite abundant supporting evidence from Colombia, China and Philippines. Secondly, the U.S. does effectively impose charges for sulfur dioxide emissions, through its national tradable permit program. The U.S. EPA and environmental policymakers believe that this program has promoted substantial reduction of pollution. Pollution charges are very common in Europe, where they have worked effectively for over a generation. We discuss the Netherlands case in Chapter Two of the report. |
Q. | You advocate benefit-cost analysis as a key tool for fighting pollution, and you point to a persuasive example for China. But what if the numbers for another place suggest that saving lives won't pay? Does this imply doing nothing about pollution? |
A. | The sad reality in poor countries is that people are dying from many causes, including pollution. The task is to find ways of saving lives as quickly and cost-effectively as possible. If the benefit-cost numbers don't look good for pollution control in some cases, that simply implies that other health or education programs will save lives more effectively. Sitting back and doing nothing about lifesaving is not an option. |
Q. | I'm a little confused after reading the report. Are a few big factories or a lot of small plants in slum areas the real problem? |
A. | It depends on the circumstances. As we note in Chapter Two, big factories look like the prime sources of industrial air pollution problems in urban Brazil. In many areas of India, by contrast, small tanneries and other informal-sector enterprises are creating serious problems. Good, locally-relevant information is a major key to progress here. |
Q. | You advocate color-coded ratings of factories as a good tool for reducing pollution. Does the Bank apply that principle to its own projects, and if not, are there any plans to do so? |
A. | We don't, and you have a very good point. The Bank's projects are supposed to conform to strict standards laid down in its new Pollution Prevention Handbook. The Bank needs to do a better job of tracking the actual environmental performance of its projects over time, and we are working on that. |
Q. | You've provided some examples of new programs in action, but we'd like to learn more. Where can we get the "big picture?" |
A. | New resources are appearing on the Web every day. For a good start, we strongly recommend "Environmental Agencies on the Web" (http://www.worldbank.org/nipr/epas/) on our NIPR Website. This frequently-updated page provides links to interesting new programs and information sources in a variety of EPA's around the world. |
Q. | Would the World Bank ever really stop one of its structural adjustment operations just because some river would get more polluted or some valley would become smoggier? How could we tell whether you were trying to include environmental concerns? |
A. | Structural adjustment operations are frequently large, complex and time-consuming. They involve a lot of negotiation, discussion and background work. Those who have a seat at the negotiating table generally have an impact on the program. Since the Bank's new Operational Directive strongly affirms its environmental responsibility in this context, we believe that the future looks brighter. As we note in Greening Industry, the key is to get knowledgeable, committed people to the table. As for observing the outcomes, part of the Bank's new mandate is to develop and publish indices of performance for its projects. Environmental indices should be high on the list. |
Q. | Have any factory owners or employees been hurt because one of the public disclosure programs you advocate has generated local violence against them? After all, your report says that outraged citizens have burned or blockaded factories in the past. Aren't you setting yourselves against private companies which hold the main key to reducing poverty in developing countries? |
A. | To our knowledge, no one has been hurt by backlashes caused by public disclosure programs. As we explain in Chapter Three of the report, good public disclosure programs should prevent such things from happening. Disclosure occurs as part of a process, in which companies and communities are educated about the issues and possible solutions before disclosure actually occurs. In practice, companies are given plenty of notice and opportunities to improve before publication occurs. Most companies seem to like well-run public disclosure programs because they provide more reliable, comparable information about the relative environmental performance of different factories. In Indonesia, the environmental agency has increased its popularity with companies in the disclosure program by providing guides for improvement as well as public ratings. |
Q. | If many regulators have been lax, corrupt or weak, as you say, why do you expect them to implement the new approach effectively? |
A. | That's why we advocate public information and public participation. Transparency is a major key to reform here. |
Q. | Is the government over-stepping the bounds if it gets into the business of training private-sector environmental managers.? Normally, regulation works better if it doesn't intervene at such a micro-level. |
A. | As we note in Chapter Four, the government's mandate is to reduce pollution cost-effectively. Recent pilot programs in Mexico have suggested that targeted training programs are a cost-effective alternative to traditional regulation. If they work, they should be seriously considered. |
Q. | In Chapter Two you talk a lot about "optimal pollution." Who in the world is smart enough to say that a certain level of pollution is "optimal" when it is high enough to actually kill people? How would you feel if your own family lived in such a place? |
A. | Most of the people on our team have lived with their families in such places, and we haven't liked it any better than you would. We also recognize that poverty is the parent of a thousand tragedies. Optimal doesn't mean "good"; it means "as good as possible under the circumstances." In poor countries, these circumstance include people dying from infectious diseases and many other causes. The goal is to save lives as quickly and cost-effectively as possible, and pollution control provides one tool for attacking the larger problem. When saving lives through pollution control costs more than saving lives by other means, then it makes sense to divert resources to those other means. Calling a particular level of pollution "optimal" doesn't mean that we like it. |
Q. | If public disclosure is such a great idea for the Third World, how come it hasn't been adopted in the First World? |
A. | It has been widely adopted in the First World. Please see Chapter Three of Greening Industry for a discussion of some of these programs. Much more information can be found on our NIPR Website. |
Q. | How did you get so much information about polluting factories? Is it possible for outside researchers to get access to it? |
A. | We have collaborated with developing-country environmental agencies for over half a decade. As part of our relationship, we have been given access to information which has not previously been available. Where possible, we are making these useful data public. You can find a lot of information on our NIPR Website at http://www.worldbank.org/nipr/polmod.htm. |
Q. | Cleaning up Third-World industry seems like a good way to save lives, and I'd like to help even though I live in the North. What can I do? |
A. | Your national development assistance agency may well have programs which support technical assistance, training and equipment purchases for developing-country environmental agencies. Many international NGO's have active outreach programs as well. By lending your political and financial support, you can make a difference. |
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