EAST ASIA: Real Action Needed, Not Another Document

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK
With growing frequency, the summers in North-east Asia are providing the region's children a stark lesson about the environment they live in. It is during these months that sand and dust storms descend on parts of Japan, Korea, China and Mongolia, at times forcing schools to close.

The air-polluting storms originate on land that has been reduced to desert in northern China and neighbouring Mongolia, due to excessive farming and grazing.

''The picture looks impressive on paper but governments are not striving to implement their programmes.'' Jiragorn Gajaseni. Greenpeace.

In South-east Asia, children are no less safe during their summers due to dust clouds that takes the shape of a giant brown haze that spreads from the forest fires over Indonesia affecting Malaysia, Singapore and the Indonesian archipelago the most.

These are just two examples in a long list of environmental woes that reveal how much harder East Asian countries need to work in their quest for sustainable development.

East Asia's track record in achieving the goals set out at the U.N. summit in Rio varies, experts say.

It ranges from strengths in some areas, such as broad government support in achieving some of the goals, to clear shortfalls, such as lack of funding, says Ravi Sawhney, director of the environmental and natural resources development division at the Bangkok-based United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

Green activists say the region's record needs to be studied in more depth. ''The picture looks impressive on paper but governments are not striving to implement their programmes,'' says Jiragorn Gajaseni, head of the South-east Asia division of Greenpeace, the global environment lobby.

But Sawhney points out that a growing number of countries have ''institutionalised the process'' by setting up national committees for sustainable development in the years since the Rio summit moved sustainability up the priority list of economic growth and development.

''These are good signs, because Agenda 21 requires this concerted effort,'' adds Sawhney, referring to the final document that emerged out of the Rio Summit.

The 400-page Agenda 21 identified a host of issues where action from a broad spectrum of society was needed to ensure that development and environmental protection could co-exist.

Among the countries in North-east Asia that have done so are China, Japan, South Korea and Mongolia. In South-east Asia, similar steps have been taken in countries ranging from Malaysia and Thailand to the Philippines.

Some-east Asian countries will also be able to hold up their record of greater civil society participation at the Johannesburg summit, says Sawhney.

''There has been more evidence of greater community involvement in shaping public policies,'' Sawhney explains. ''We have seen a proliferation of NGOs (non-governmental organisations).''

But two areas where governments have come short are drives to implement sustainable development policies through legislative measures and the funding of these national efforts.

Jiragorn of Greenpeace says, for instance, that some developing countries find it difficult to adopt development-friendly policies something not easy for resource-short countries to do.

The Philippines is still going into power plants that are coal-fired, using fuel that is considered 'dirty' because it causes pollution. Thailand is still keen on building one in the south of Bangkok.

While Malaysia has adopted environmental measures at home, its logging companies are known to be operating in countries like Indonesia and Papua New Guinea and elsewhere in the South Pacific, in effect 'exporting' deforestation.

The funding shortfalls that South-east Asian governments have had to grapple with came into focus in the aftermath of the 1997 financial crisis, when the immediate priorities became rescuing banks and debt-ridden firms and paying foreign debt.

Experts add that governments are still keen on directing money to revive the still sagging economies rather than pumping money into sustainable development initiatives, like promoting environment-friendly alternative sources of fuel.

Thailand's record, in fact, reflects the regional pattern. ''Thailand's 1998 environment budget was cut by 25 percent as a result of the crisis, and since then it has been cut more,'' says Anthony Zola, environmental governance advisor at the Governance and Local Development Network Centre, a regional NGO.

Governments' failure to fund efforts aimed at protecting the environment and enhancing the quality of life would be detrimental to the region, adds Jiragorn. ''Governments cannot ignore this issue at the WSSD in Johannesburg. Lack of funding, implementing policies and monitoring are key.''

An ESCAP report for the WSSD highlights a host of environment problems that stand out in South-east Asia. These range from illegal logging, overexploitation of coastal and marine resources, carbon dioxide emissions and urban air pollution, to deteriorating water quality and irreversible loss of biodiversity.

In North-east Asia, ESCAP draws attention to problems ranging from atmospheric pollution, contamination of freshwater resources, destruction of the marine environment and loss of biodiversity to desertification, land degradation and deforestation.

Asia's governments are well aware of the environmental degradation in their midst and are backing a common Asian call for specific issues to be addressed and resolved at the Johannesburg conference.

The Asian agenda for Johannesburg, approved in November last year in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, deals with seven issues. These are capacity building and poverty reduction for sustainable development, cleaner production and sustainable energy, land management and biodiversity.

Added to this are the protection and management of access to freshwater resources, oceans, coastal and marine resources, the sustainable development of Pacific island nations and action on climate change.

''The quality of life and the environment have to be developed together. There can be no emphasis of one over the other,'' says Jiragorn.

''For Asian countries to gain from the summit, we do not need another document stating so, but governments have to make pledges to fund and implement Agenda 21,'' Jiragorn urged.