Industrialized vs Developing Economies

January 15, 2008 by John Morelli | Filed under: Industrialized vs Developing Economies | No Comments »

Welcome to the discussion!

How do disparities between industrialized and developing economies impact our ability to succeed as environmental managers?

Your comments and suggestions are welcome here.  Please give some thought to how you would like to see this topic explored or expanded and post your thoughts on the discussion forum under the “Industrialized vs. Developing Economies”  topic thread.

Posted below you will find abstracts and reference citations of articles that have been collected in support of this topic.  Some may have links to the full text documents.

December 19, 2007 by amathew , amathew , Brian Butler | Filed under: Industrialized vs Developing Economies,Literature Review | No Comments »

The authors in this hard copy text (not available electronically) discuss the very large picture of our human implications on the world. Included in the reference are the changing disease burden, medicine, pesticide effects, nutrition, urbanization, injuries and water trends and predictions including the current state of affairs. These topics provide a strong positive affirmation to many of the keys related to the Millennium Development Goals posted by the United Nations. Specifically fitting to the topic of assumptions and understandings regarding developing versus industrialized economies is the section on air pollution. Once again one will see examples of underlying assumptions regarding a specific problem such as the level of pollution declining (air) in First World countries and an increase in developing countries. While the effects are discussed in a synergistic approach to human health the assumptions are worth evaluating for inclusion in any large study.

This is a large text with limited applicability. However Chapter 13 (reviewed) contains a large amount of information regarding global implications of specific conditions and predicted outcom

December 19, 2007 by amathew , amathew , Brian Butler | Filed under: Industrialized vs Developing Economies,Literature Review | No Comments »

This reference is a report published by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, who in their mission statement says that they “contribute to sustainable development by advancing policy recommendations on international trade and investment, economic policy, climate change, measurement and assessment, and natural resources management”. Additionally they “report on international negotiations and share knowledge gained through collaborative projects with global partners, resulting in more rigorous research, capacity building in developing countries with better dialogue between North and South”. It is important to understand their charter because in this report the measuring parameters involving international agreements and goals are measured, benchmarked against one another, and critiqued thoroughly. They state that there are about 13 global Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and/or conventions and about 500 international treaties or other agreements related to the environment. This is cause for a fair amount of overlap and uncertainty regarding these programs. Many of these “agreements” such as the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have the interaction between developed and developing economies emphasized and processed in their charters. In this report the coherence across the main programs is analyzed. To this point, in research literature review, the UN’s MDG has been referenced. In this report we see the introduction of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Global Environmental Facility (GEF), International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and others. They accomplish this by benchmarking the policies against a Policy Coherence Matrix (PCM) that they developed and come to the conclusion that “we still have a long way to go before we achieve an acceptable level of policy coherence”. 

Understanding the parameters and programs is required to comprehend our problems and the interaction of developing/industrialized nations. Various MEAs and the MDG in particular speak about this interaction and the MDG itself lists, specifically, underlying assumptions and understandings regarding this topic. This document will help to put it all in perspective and also to open the door that there is no one particular answer or approach – and the ones that are out there, and in use, have large inconsistencies.

December 19, 2007 by amathew , Brian Butler | Filed under: Industrialized vs Developing Economies,Literature Review | No Comments »

This discussion paper,from the RFF, details “Mexico’s Clean Industry Program” where a voluntary approach is used to provide environmental oversight. The authors make an interesting statement that environmental authorities in developing countries, particularly those in Latin America, have embraced voluntary regulation and are rapidly putting new initiatives in place. They contrast the approach in industrialized countries where voluntary environmental programs are “typically used to encourage firms to over comply with mandatory regulations or to cut emissions of pollutants for which mandatory regulations do not exist” to the voluntary approach in developing countries where “environmental authorities generally use voluntary regulation to help remedy rampant non-compliance with mandatory regulation resulting from, among other factors, limited public support for environmental protection, weak regulatory institutions, and a paucity of financial and technical resources in the private sector”.   This is an interesting analogy to this research topic [and a great cap to the EHS management class in itself]. One should be cautioned however, that this paper becomes very technical and the math calculations alone can become burdensome.This paper is somewhat applicable to the subject. Its’ most important feature is it brings up new underlying assumptions and understandings and in some cases busts the myths.

December 19, 2007 by amathew , Brian Butler | Filed under: Industrialized vs Developing Economies,Literature Review | No Comments »

In this paper Allen Blackman and others (Mr. Blackman also authored the “Use of Economic Incentives n Developing Countries: Lessons from International Experience with Industrial Air Pollution” paper earlier reviewed) discuss their findings regarding research on environmental issues as they pertain to economic development. Specifically seven topics have been historically at the heart of these discussions. They are: the role of the state, economic growth, trade and industrialization, relations between rich and poor countries (aid, debt), structural adjustment and stabilization, population change, and the objectives and strategies of development. Blackman (et.al) discuss the history to these seven categories and how they have come to dominant the research. For instance, in particular regarding the category of growth, it is discussed the past historical issues (focused on the process and determinants of economic growth) and the “senior topic experts” (Harrod 1939, Solow 1956). Within that particular category the present day research is outlined including the topic that considers the links between economic growth and environmental impacts thereof. This empirical research studying “Environmental Kuznets Curves” suggests that degradation (of the environment) increases at low levels of income, but declines at higher levels. This argument can be used to bolster the argument that economic growth and environmental quality can go hand in hand – and this has been agreed upon by the World Bank in 1992.

This paper is applicable to the study topic. Once again it provides a good basis or stepping off point for any discussion regarding growing (developing) versus industrialized economies and their environmental impact. The references at the end of this paper provided great help in researching the topic.

December 19, 2007 by amathew , Brian Butler | Filed under: Industrialized vs Developing Economies,Literature Review | No Comments »

This is a discussion paper sponsored by “Resources for the Future”. In this case the author, William A. Pizer, discusses the topic economics versus climate change. Conflicting with earlier “themes” in the research for the project topic, where we see a global-commitment and coordination covered as underlying assumptions and understandings, this paper talks about not using a globally-coordinated approach to addressing one of the problems – climate change. In the author’s opinion an international agreement is not necessary for national governments to embrace mandatory policies. The Kyoto Protocol is used an example confirming the author’s idea that since the US has not agreed to the protocol it is still actively participating in the approach towards the end goal.This reference once again is covering a specific approach to one specific problem. The list of references could be unlimited if one were to select this approach for every possible global environmental debate related to developing and industrialized economies. It is recommended to review this reference and using it as a check and balance baseline. 

December 19, 2007 by amathew , Brian Butler | Filed under: Industrialized vs Developing Economies,Literature Review | No Comments »

This paper by Allen Blackman and Winston Harrington, sponsored by the Resources for the Future, discusses some interesting approaches to a specific problem within a specific field of global environmental concerns regarding developing countries. Using economic incentives to address industrial air pollution and its applicability, use, advantages and disadvantages is covered in depth and a couple of new (not from the references used in the presentation) assumptions can be understood. In particular it is inferred that the historical experience of those in the “west” set up an advantage over those in developing countries who do not have several decades of environmental regulatory history to learn from. If one wishes this could be converted into a new assumptions that “developing countries should rely on the history of the developed countries to formulate their approach to environmental sustainability”. As effectively pertinent is the discussion related to the constraints on environmental regulation in developing countries. These include: public sentiment that generally favors economic development over environmental protection; environmental regulatory institutions are generally much weaker along with complementary judicial, legislative and data collection institutions, than in industrialized countries; fiscal and technical resources for environmental protection are generally in short supply; and finally production is often dominated by hard-to-monitor small-scale firms.

All sources used to this point have been recognized governmental or academic-sponsored programs. It was difficult to ascertain if there is any hidden agenda regarding “Resources for the Future” – the sponsor of this paper. Some of the parallels and information to existing research for this paper are fitting within this document. Since the assumptions made regard a smaller segment regarding a global environmental issue, and only address one specific approach the assumptions are not listed on the presentation. The applicability of this source to the topic is mild – it does give good examples and ideas pertaining to a contributing smaller problem in the whole scope of environmental sustainability.

December 19, 2007 by amathew , Brian Butler | Filed under: Industrialized vs Developing Economies,Literature Review | No Comments »

This is a  report by the Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (Columbia University) in collaboration with the World Economic Forum (Geneva Switzerland) and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (Ispra, Italy). One of the criticisms of the Millennium Development Goals effort by the United Nations is that there are insufficiently defined and inadequately measured parameters. This very complete and verbose report contains, once again, recognized assumptions and understandings regarding developing and industrialized economies. If one is interested in the actual parameters and figures related to developing these indexes and how the global community is measuring up to the goals one can examine in depth charts and graphs and compare regions versus individual countries. The majority of the applicability of the report lies in the Executive Summary and the First Chapter – The Need for Environmental Performance Indicators. Great reference information, providing good “check and balance” against UN-based references. Most of the referenced material was found in the first couple of sections. Very large document – caution is advised to concentrate on the research topic in question.

December 19, 2007 by amathew , amathew , Brian Butler | Filed under: Industrialized vs Developing Economies,Literature Review | No Comments »

This is a report by the United Nations, in this case the United Nations Environmental Program(me), where the environmental outlook or forecast for the entire world is discussed using various scenarios. Caution must be advised on this reference, the Global Environmental Outlooks are a very large project, and after review Chapter 4 appears to have the greatest amount of applicability for this project. The scenarios discussed include ones with “markets first”, “policy first”, “security first” and “sustainability first” approaches. While these scenarios are not extremely important for the research they all come with identifiable assumptions regarding general tendencies and underlying facts and predictions. These “driving forces” (page 322) include demography, economic development, human development, science and technology, governance and culture and environment. It is from these driving forces that many more assumptions and understandings – once again from a world forum – are laid out and explained. The report continues with providing a better understanding to specific topics and an in depth global approach to climate change. Included in the report are helpful graphics/maps and diagrams which help the researcher to better understand the issue and confirm previous definitions of a country’s status but do little to aid in the overall research of this topic. Most of the information applicable resides in the first twenty pages of this 80 page report. The applicability to this subject is extremely pertinent and provides a solid starting point for research. 

December 19, 2007 by amathew , John Morelli , Brian Butler | Filed under: Industrialized vs Developing Economies,Literature Review | No Comments »

The United Nation’s report entitled, “The Millennium Development Goals Report – 2007”, generally details the progress towards achieving the goals of the Millennium Declaration. All United Nations Member States adopted this Declaration and subsequent goals in 2000 with a achievement date of 2015. This report provides status as to the midpoint progress towards this “universal framework that was developed to be a means for developing countries and their development partners to work together in pursuit of a shared future for all.” There are many goals set forth by this international effort. Among them are efforts to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, and develop a global partnership for development. Included within the scope of the project, and most important to the topic researched, is the goal of ensuring environmental sustainability. While the other sections are interesting and provide insight to the broad scope of this project the environmental sustainability section is an excellent source of reference material for the applicable research. Within this section statistics regarding areas of the world are demonstrated helping one to understand the differences and conflicts regarding industrialized versus developing economies. As important are some of the facts stated in the comment introduction by the Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs where recognized assumptions and understandings – agreed upon by member states – are covered.  This material alone lays a basis for recognized and agreed parameters relating the assumptions and understandings regarding developing and industrialized nations and economies.