Published in Asia Environmental Review, April 1999

The first phase of an ambitious U.S. program to help start cleaner production roundtables throughout Asia has just concluded. Asia Environmental Review editor Murray Griffin spoke to Joe Pringle, International Coordinator with the U.S. National Pollution Prevention Roundtable (NPPR) about the program and about cleaner production activities in the region.

I believe the original timeframe envisaged by the US-Asia Environmental Partnership (US-AEP) and the NPPR memorandum for the establishment of cleaner production roundtables is now coming to an end. What have been the program’s successes?

One of our core objectives was to boost awareness about cleaner production among Asian stakeholders (governments, industry associations, academic and research institutions, etc.). Toward this end we’ve had a great deal of success. While it’s impossible to separate the effect we’ve had from the activities of dozens of other cleaner production projects going on in the region, we’ve noticed a pretty substantial increase in awareness and capacity for cleaner production among the Asian partner organizations that we’ve been working with.

Our second major objective has been to create roundtables of interested stakeholders in each target country, and create a mechanism for ongoing information sharing between Asia and the U.S. A roundtable is basically a network of people and organizations that can benefit by working together to share information, coordinate activities, and enter into partnerships with one another to foster cleaner production in some way. This can be a fairly low-cost activity – we’re not trying to build new organizations that require staff – just a set of cooperative activities between interested parties that can benefit each of them and promote cleaner production at the same time. There are now functioning roundtable organizations in eight countries in Asia.

Where do the challenges still lie in terms of encouraging greater take-up of cleaner production? Are the barriers legislative? Economic? Information barriers? Attitudinal?

Unfortunately, I would say all of the above. This is not to say there hasn’t been some incredible successes and progress, it’s just that there are very significant challenges ahead, and the scale of pollution problems in Asia is such that it is critical to concentrate resources where they can do the most good. Right now, the incentives for the private sector to implement cleaner production, especially public pressure and regulatory, are quite weak (the magnitude of these incentives tends to differ GREATLY among different industry groups – small and medium enterprises, multinationals, big domestic companies…). Also, there tends to be fairly significant attitudinal barriers to cleaner production. Most private sector managers associate anything that is good for the environment as a business cost – as something bad for business. Few make the distinction between cleaner production and pollution control. They assume that when someone is talking about cleaner production, that it is the same as air pollution scrubbers and wastewater treatment technologies. There is just not a high level of awareness about potential efficiency gains that can be derived from implementing cleaner production.

Do any governments in the region stand out as having a particularly strong commitment (other than just saying the right things) to the promotion of cleaner production? How has this commitment been demonstrated?