Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Unfortunately, the situation in the DCs is vastly difference because none of the
DCs has yet to establish effective monitoring/enforcement operations. Although
the DCs do use the EIA process (with limited success), which do specify the
needed EPMs, the follow-up provisions for monitoring/enforcement are generally
so weak that it is much less costly to evade rather than to comply with the
specified EPMs. It seems that the decision makers of the DCs have not wanted
to implement effective monitoring/enforcement because this conflicts with their
interest in immediate financial gains, rather than in optimal long-term economics
(See section on “Environmental Economics and Financing”).
What DC and IAA Practitioners Can Do to Correct This Problem
There are several approaches that can be utilized to encourage use by the DCs
of effective monitoring/enforcement.
World Bank and Other IAAs: Project Monitoring and Enforcement
The
best opportunity for improving DC environmental performance is the leverage
available to the World Bank and other IAAs that help finance DC projects, for
requiring project monitoring/enforcement as a loan codicil. There have been
some projects where the loan codicil did include this requirement, including
World Bank/Gunaratnam projects
81
,
161
,
162
,
163
. But these have been very few and,
in general, the World Bank and others seem to have assiduously avoided this
requirement. (They have preferred the “diplomatic approach,” no doubt because
such effective monitoring would clearly conflict with political wishes, including
the very serious problem of wastage of project money by corruption.) Also, the
monitoring would clearly indicate the wastage that takes place and which parties
are the “culprits,” and both the IAAs and DCs have preferred not to push this
approach. Only in recent years has the World Bank begun overt evaluation of
the corruption problem, and this is a major issue now facing new World Bank
president appointed in 2007. The job of the IAAs is to get all parties involved in
project investments to understand that only by competent monitoring can defi-
ciencies in project performance be evaluated, leading to progressive improvement
in planning/design criteria to get best results for these investments.
Guidelines Design Manuals
Another boat missed by the IAAs is their
lack of understanding of the need for producing guidelines manuals on how
to design DC projects that will suit the DC system, which will actually produce
the desired objectives. With very few exceptions, all manuals and virtually all
university teaching (even at AIT in Bangkok) utilize the affluent IC approach,
including design criteria and matching environmental standards. If the project
planning/design practitioners (in both DCs and IAAs) had the proper manu-
als, they could greatly improve their performance. When projects are properly
designed to match DC conditions, the chances that these will actually be built
and operated will be greatly improved. See the section on “Technology Transfer”
for details.
