Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
operated by the U.S. Public Health Service) had a leadership role in the “U.S.
Environmental Movement” with a budget believed to exceed the governmental
budgets of all other countries combined, and this remarkable effort has been
further enhanced by very significant extra investments by U.S. state and local
agencies and by the U.S. private sector. The result is, in the United States
(and somewhat similarly in other ICs) the approach to resolving environmental
degradation problems has become very hi-tech, with the level of technology
continuing to increase.
Problem of Developing Countries
What is the situation in the DCs, as related to the context of environmental
technology development in the ICs, keeping in mind that the bulk of the world's
population, land area, and environmental resources are located in the DC regions?
An important point here is that the IC developments were essentially focused as
would be expected on IC problems, with little, if any, attention to the fate of envi-
ronment in the DCs. However, development of the U.S. environmental movement
in the years immediately following World War II (stemming from the new role of
the United States as a truly rich country) led to the UN/Stockholm/1972 Confer-
ence, which established a global effort funded by the ICs for assisting the DCs for
protecting DC environments, including establishment of UNEP, and led to estab-
lishment of National Environmental Protection Agencies (NEnPAs) in virtually
all DCs, either as an environmental ministry or branch or affiliate of existing min-
istries, intended to function together with existing National Economic Planning
Agencies (NEcPAs) (already established with World Bank assistance) to promote
continuing assistance to DCs to promote economic development (E1 develop-
ment), but without sufficient attention to protecting environmental resources (E2
protection) as needed to promote sustainable development.
Examination of what has actually happened to the DC environments since
the beginning of the “International Global Environmental Movement” in 1972
shows that the expectations for protection of DC environmental resources have
not happened. Indeed, as shown by the UN Brundtland Report of 1987
141
,DC
environmental degradation over the period 1972 to 1987 actually exceeded the
total of all historically previous degradation. This was due to (1) rapid growth of
population and industries in the ICs resulting in increasing demands for import
timber and other environmental resources from the DCs, (2) rapid development
of new technologies, making it increasingly much easier to extract and export
these resources, and (3) matching realization by DC decision makers that allowing
such rapid extraction and export furnished much money for their immediate goals
of remaining in office
72
,
82
,
83
. In this context the newly established DC/NEnPAs
found that achieving meaningful environmental protection could not be done
in emulation of role models like U.S. EPA, because of lack of basic will by
DC governments to resolve the degradation problem
58
. Hence, the NEnPAs had,
compared to say, U.S. EPA, relatively very low budgets and staff without experi-
ence in how to proceed to protect environment under DC conditions. Moreover,
