Subject: Environment in Devel. Countries

From: [email-masked]
Date: 8 Nov 94 09:39:03 EET

Subject: Environment/Developing Countries

The OECD Development Centre has just published:

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"Input-Based Pollution Estimates for Environmental Assessment in Developing
Countries"

Technical Paper no. 101

by Sebastien Dessus, David Roland-Holst and Dominique van der Mensbrugghe

October 1994

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Copies of this paper (limited quantity) are available at no cost from address
below: (please indicate "Technical Paper 101"). I also would be grateful if you
could use your communicative skills to post this info on other lists with
environment and development discussions, Merci from a sunny Paris!

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SUMMARY

(261094)

The practice of environmental regulation and assessment in developing countries
faces many special challenges. apart from popular misconceptions about negative
links between environmentalism and economic growth, there are numerous
practical limitations to appraising environmental conditions and implementing
policies that conserve or improve them. These include weak institutional
capacity or discipline, high monitoring and administrative costs for individual
programs and limited local engineering information.

Institutional constraints mean that first-best policies like direct pollution
monitoring and regulation may not be feasible. Even market-based systems like
tradable pollution permits usually require initial assessment and monitoring
which is too costly or complex to be supported locally. Detailed data on
pullution do exist for OECD countries, however, and this paper attempts to
render this information more usable to environmental analysts in countries
where direct sampling has not been possible. The econometric results reported
here are also designed for an environmental assessment and regulation scheme
which would be more easily implemented in dev eloping countries. By shifting
monitoring and regulation from all industrial producers to trade in a small
number of intermediate commodities, our results indicate that the vast majority
of causes of industrial pollution could be brought under supervision.

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OECD Development Centre
Henny Helmich
Administrator
External Co-operation Programme
94, rue Chardon-Lagache
75016 PARIS
France
Fax: (++33-1)4524 7943
E-mail: Henny [email-masked]

Also available:
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