Environmental attitudes in less developed countries

Environmental policies in the developing countries are the product of circumstances quite different from those found in advanced nations. As a result, such policies have thus far been rather permissive. There is, however, considerable variance among developing countries in this respect, as well as substantial change over time. Not much evidence has been uncovered pointing to a migration of industry and mining to ‘pollution havens’ in developing countries—the reverse in fact seems to be the case. Nevertheless, it is likely that environmental policies will remain less stringent in developingthan developed countries for the foreseeable future. Indeed, the gap may well widen substantially.     

The future for coal in Western Europe

The past twenty years have demonstrated a striking flexibility in fuel supplies. Does this mean, now the dangers of import dependence have been demonstrated, that it will in the future be equally easy to move to a different composition of energy supplies with a larger role for indigenous coal? An examination of the factors determining interfuel substitution over the past twenty years suggests that present circumstances do not appear entirely favourable to coal revival.     

WOODFUEL - A TIME FOR RE-ASSESSMENT

Official statistics and surveys show that woodfuel is the dominant end-use of forest products especially in developing countries. This paper examines the end-use pattern and per capita consumption figures for selected developing countries. In terms of total energy requirements woodfuel, a renewable resource, is the third most important fuel after oil and coal, but may be the primary fuel in terms of number of actual consumers. The future consumption pattern is estimated for the developing and developed countries and it is anticipated that total woodfuel consumption may increase by about 2 per cent per year at least until the year 2000. The supply position shows that while present consumption of all forest products is more or less in balance with the increment of the growing stock, in certain areas the forest capital is being depleted to meet demand. Total demand is likely to double by the turn of the century. Therefore, plantations, especially of fuelwood, will have to be established if the growing stock is not to be depleted and if an energy crisis in developing countries is to be averted.     

The role of environmental impact assessment in coal production and utilization

Large-scale exploitation of fossil fuels and nuclear power can have an adverse effect on the human and natural environment. That need not be the case, if the effect on the environment is carefully assessed to ensure the development of a sustainable approach. This paper examines the process of environmental impact assessment (EIA) for coal from an international perspective. The concept of EIA is not new. A formalized process of EIA was introduced in the USA in 1970, and more recently similar legislation has been implemented in other countries. The member states of the European Community are required to adopt EIA regulations, as set out in Directive 85/337/EEC. Elsewhere, in Japan and Australia, there are requirements for EIA and a growing need for the process can be seen in developing countries. A comparison is made of the EIA process for coal in the international arena, and exemplary procedures are highlighted. Potential problems such as delays, modifications and additional costs are analysed, and the benefits of EIA, both to industry and environment, are discussed. A database of coal-related EIA would facilitate an exchange of information on the subject.     

RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES: THE CASE OF BRAZIL

Industrial nations have based their economic and social development on the use of fossil fuels (coal, petroleum and natural gas). This trend is being followed by many developing countries which have neither the natural resources nor the manpower to adopt this path. As a result one finds in many of these countries 'islands of prosperity' (based on consumption patterns copied from industrial nations) surrounded by a 'sea of poverty.' The problems resulting from this dual social structure are obvious in many parts of the world. It is argued here that renewable energy sources are a natural basis for the development of the poorer countries and that intelligent use of hydropower, biomass and direct solar energy can shortcut many of the problems faced today by industrial nations. The case of Brazil is analyzed as one of the countries in which these solutions are being tried.     

ASPECTS OF PETROLEUM TRANSPORT IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Dramatic changes in the institutional structure of the international oil industry in recent years have created new responsibilities and opportunities for developing countries in petroleum transport. The article discusses the prospects for changes in the ownership/control pattern of seaborne oil movements and the need for both oil producing and oil importing developing countries to pursue national plans to acquire shipping tonnage and expertise, without being deterred by the present depressed conditions of the world shipping industry. Drawing from the experience in India, it deals with some features and problems of petroleum transport by sea, pipeline, rail and road. It stresses the importance of co-operation among developing countries through common operation of deep-water terminals and large size tankers to optimise transport costs.     

Road transport fuel demand in the LDCs

Over the last decades, oil consumption in the developing countries hus been increasing rapidly. Road transport has accounted for most of this increase in demand. It is the thesis of this paper that future growth in oil demand in developing countries will occur mainly in the road transport sector and that this growth will be surprisingly strong. Estimated income and price elasticities for several developing countries are presented and forecasts for oil consumption in road transport in the developing countries up to 2010 are given.     

Adaptation to Climate Change in Developing Countries

Adaptation to climate change is given increasing international attention as the confidence in climate change projections is getting higher. Developing countries have specific needs for adaptation due to high vulnerabilities, and they will in this way carry a great part of the global costs of climate change although the rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations are mainly the responsibility of industrialized countries. This article provides a status of climate change adaptation in developing countries. An overview of observed and projected climate change is given, and recent literature on impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation are reviewed, including the emerging focus on mainstreaming of climate change and adaptation in development plans and programs. The article also serves as an introduction to the seven research articles of this special issue on climate change adaptation in developing countries. It is concluded that although many useful steps have been taken in the direction of ensuring adequate adaptation in developing countries, much work still remains to fully understand the drivers of past adaptation efforts, the need for future adaptation, and how to mainstream climate into general development policies.     

Coal and peat in the sub-Saharan region of Africa

Increased energy demand as a result of growth in population, trends to sedentation and urbanization, and the desire for improvement in living standards, coupled with apparent climatic changes, are reducing fuelwood availability and contributing to deforestation and desertification in the sub-Saharan countries. In 14 of those countries, the transport, industrial, and electric power generation sectors are all dependent on imported petroleum products for their energy needs with resultant balance of trade and debt-servicing problems. Coal and peat are essentially unused and in some cases unknown in sub-Saharan Africa. However, they might comprise valuable alternative energy sources in some or all of the developing nations of the region. The eleven countries considered in this appraisal reportedly contain coal and peat. On the basis of regional geology, another five countries might also contain coal-bearing rocks. If the resource potential is adequate, coal and peat might be utilized in a variety of ways including substituting for fuelwood, generating electricity, supplying process heat for local industry and increasing agricultural productivity.     

Small stand-alone windpower systems

The main purpose of this paper is to review opportunities for the use of windpower in remote areas where there is no electricity grid, which of course is a common feature of the rural areas of many of the poorer developing countries. It should also be mentioned that similar situations arise in the remoter areas of some of the larger and richer developed countries such as the USA, Canada, Australia, the USSR and even parts of Western Europe. Hence, generally speaking the wind systems appropriate in the remoter parts of the developing countries are equally applicable in the remoter parts of the industrialized countries for similar purposes. Therefore, this paper will deal exclusively with small stand-alone windpower systems and will also highlight one or two significant factors of special importance for the use of the technology in developing countries, such as the potential importance of local manufacture of equipment.     

Cogeneration in Developing Countries: Prospects and Problems

The analysis reveals that although cogeneration alone will not resolve power-shortage problems, it could produce more scheme in developing countries. The paper estimates the cogeneration potential in selected countries and identifies the technical, economic/financial and institutional issues of importance to cogeneration development in developing countries. The analysis reveals that although cogeneration alone will not resolve power-shortage problems, it could produce more than a 10% increase in the electricity-generation capacity in developing countries. Most of this potential is in the industrial sector and can be economically developed.     

An application of the Krutilla — fisher model to appraising the benefits of green belt preservation versus site development

Financial returns can be deceptive as criteria upon which to make public decisions where outputs from proposed developments are subsidized, such as housing, or protected from imports, such as opencast coal mining. Removing subsidies and the effects of import restrictions suggests that the social benefits from these developments are much less than the financial benefits. Including externalities from the proposed developments on neighbouring householders, and preservation benefits from green belt land, estimated by contingent valuation methods, reveals that the social benefits from opencast coal mining are actually negative.     

Potential impacts of imposing methyl bromide phaseout on US strawberry growers: a case study of a nomination for a critical use exemption under the Montreal Protocol

The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer requires developed countries to phaseout methyl bromide production and non-quarantine uses by 2005 and developing countries to do the same by 2015. Exemptions to phaseout have been significant in slowing the process of abatement; many countries have applied for exemptions for some uses, partly on grounds that phaseout is economically infeasible. Data on the US strawberry market are used to investigate grower costs arising from substitution away from methyl bromide, the impact of trends in and characteristics of the demand for fresh strawberries, and characteristics of trade with countries not yet required to eliminate use of the compound. It appears that actual net costs to growers will be much smaller than the simple increase in production costs cited in the US nomination for exemption.     

Acid Deposition and Integrated Zoning Control in China

China's rapidly growing economy is coupled with the consumption of large amounts of coal. An energy mix dominated by coal and inefficient energy utilization processes have led to increasingly serious problems of acid rain and sulfur dioxide pollution. Moreover, trends in the emissions of acidifying air pollutants lead to predictions of a very serious acid deposition problem in the future. In the absence of mitigating actions, these trends foretell a future of increasingly detrimental impacts to ecosystems in China and, potentially, to ecosystems in neighboring countries. China has implemented a two control zone (TCZ) policy, resulting in the establishment of acid rain and sulfur dioxide control zones, in an attempt to implement a cost-effective approach to mitigating acid deposition problems. While some short-term successes have resulted from management actions associated with the TCZ policy, it is clear additional measures and new policy directions are needed to reverse worsening acid deposition problems in the long term. To this end the following recommendations are presented: adjusting the primary energy mix, placing a greater emphasis on abating the effects of acid deposition, concentrating pollution control on large point sources, implementing an emission permit system for coal-fired power plants, utilizing an integrated approach in designing and evaluating control measures, and developing a greater research capacity. Research strategies must be developed that will lead to: (1) an improved scientific understanding of the sources of acidifying pollutants, their associated migration patterns, and their impacts; and (2) an identification of cost-effective mitigating strategies for the entire country.     

Development of appropriate technologies: A possible way forward for environmental protection of developing countries like China

Summary To solve environmental problems a vast amount of manpower, material and financial resources has been spent. Some people consider that this is necessary, and a reasonable price which human beings must pay for development, especially industrialisation. Maybe it is true. But can people solve the environmental problems of developing countries better when they have learned the experiences and lessons of developed countries? One possible way is proposed in this paper, which makes a special reference to the real situation in China. The fundamental idea is to develop and apply appropriate technologies in the phase of national industrialisation. This will help developing countries to achieve desired environmental effects more economically. The appropriate technologies mentioned in the paper are of two kinds: appropriate industrial production technologies and appropriate environmental technologies. The development of the former will help to reduce environmental pollution and other problems caused by industrialisation. The development of the latter will enable developing countries to keep an acceptable environmental quality within a controlled cost. In the paper the definition of appropriate technologies is clarified, and the criteria for the selection and evaluation of appropriate technologies are proposed. The possibility of a realisation of developing the economy and protecting the environment at same time is then analysed. The conclusion is that development and application of appropriate technologies is an optimal strategy when the real conditions of developing countries like China are considered. Finally, some of the initial appropriate environmental technologies which should be developed are suggested.Professor Ranjie Hou has recently been working as a Research Fellow at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Karlsrube University, Federal Republic of Germany.     

What is needed to improve tropical conservation? Appropriate education, training, and encouragement

Currently, there is a need for a better multidisciplinary education system for tropical conservation, as well as a need for more people from developing countries to receive such improved education and training. If this combination is achieved, universities in both developed and developing nations will likely produce graduates who are better prepared for jobs involving non-academic tropical conservation initiatives and, simultaneously produce graduates who may be better accepted as conservationists in tropical destinations.     

Research needs for improving biofuel burning cookstove technologies

The contribution of the household biofuel cooking energy system in developing countries to anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases is significant and a potential exists to halve this contribution cost-effectively. A review of past programmes aimed at disseminating stoves designed to reduce fuel consumption and exposures shows these programmes to have been only partially successful. If future programmes are to achieve their intended societal objectives and satisfy consumer requirements, research on designing improved stoves with lower emissions is critical. Integrated research will also be required on other related aspects, such as measurements of emissions from various stove-biofuel combinations, and on developing improved procedures for testing, evaluation and dissemination. The multiple benefits that can accrue from these programmes makes continuing and increased investment of efforts worthwhile.     

Seaborne iron ore trade in the 1990s

This paper discusses how world steel production and seaborne iron ore trade have grown since 1950. The role of steel production forecasts in determining investment in the iron ore industry is examined. Forecasts for world steel production and the demand and supply of seaborne iron ore in the 1990s are presented. It is predicted that world steel production will increase by 64 million tons between 1991 and 2000. This increase will be located principally in the developing countries and China. The corresponding increase in seaborne iron ore trade will be approximately 55 million tons. Expansion projects will be located mainly in Australia and Brazil, but no greenfield iron ore projects will be undertaken. By the end of the decade, the demand for seaborne iron ore will be equal to its supply.     

The Worldwide Availability of Phosphate Rock

The US Bureau of Mines has investigated the resource potential of 201 phosphate mines and depositee in 28 market economy countries and 17 mines and deposits in the USSR and China. The 201 mines and deposits contain an estimated 34.2 billiong tonnes (t) of recoverable phosphate rock (at the demonstrated resource level), with Morocco and Western Sahara accounting for 61% (21 billion t) and with the USA accounting for 19% (6.4 billion t). The 17 mines and deposits evaluated in the USSR and China contain approximately 1.5 billion t of potentially recoverable phosphate rock. Potential annual capacity from low-cost, high-grade producing mines in the USA is estimated to decline significantly during the latter half of the next decade, and the US phosphate fertilizer industry will have to obtain phosphate rock by developing new, higher-cost, lower-grade mines or import phosphate rock to satisfy anticipated demand in the next century. Of the world's new production capacity that are likely to be developed over the next decade, slightly over one-third could be produced at an estimated 1981 cost of $40/t or less, and about two-thirds would cost in the $40 to $50 per tonne range (including a 15% rate of return). In comparison, most of the competing phosphate rock from producing mines in Morocco could be produced for less than $40/t.     

Dynamics of state mining enterprises during the 1980s and the outlook for the 1990s

This paper examines the evolution of the control by the state of mining and smelting from 1975 to 1989. In 1950, there was little state-owned mining capacity outside the centrally planned economies. A wave of nationalizations of mine assets swept over the developing countries in the late 1960s and early 1970s. State control continued to rise, in developing countries as well as in the developed market economy countries, until the mid-1980s, when the trend reversed. At present some 20% of Western world mineral production is state controlled. The level of control is highest for those minerals mined mainly in the developing countries, and lowest for those minerals mined mainly in the developed market economy countries. The current trend is toward privatization of state-owned mining enterprises in developed countries and it is expected that as the 1990s progress, privatization of such enterprises will also begin to take place in developing countries.