WORCESTER: Much of the world’s development in the next century will come in Asia, and unless preventative measures are taken now, much of the world’s environmental degradation, as well, a U.S. foreign aid official said at Clark University yesterday.

Despite the region’s economic woes, Asia will flourish in the next decade, said Peter Kimm, executive director of the United States-Asia Environmental Partnership.

"Much of the Asia of 2010 has yet to be built," Kimm said in a speech keynoting a three-day conference at Clark on Asian economic development and environmental protection. "There are decisions to be made."

Thirteen of the world’s 15 most polluted cities are in Asia, and the situation will only worsen, Kimm said, unless the United States forms partnerships with the emerging economic powers to avoid the environmental mistakes of the industrial nations.

"For better or worse, we live in a common world," Kimm said. "What we do affects everyone else, and what everyone else does affects us."

The US-AEP is an interagency program run by USAID—the State Department’s Agency for International Development—since 1992 to help promote environmentally sound economic growth. Clark’s Greening of Industry Network is collaborating with US-AEP on helping Asian countries transform agriculture-based economies to environmentally friendly industry.

Kimm cited the "mind-blowing" global advancements since implementation of the Marshall Plan to reconstruct Europe, including: the end of colonialism; the technological abilitity to feed the world’s population; the collapse of communism, and simultaneous worldwide movements toward democracy and free enterprise; the elimination of some diseases; and the contributions of the International Monetary Fund.

"These have been profound achievements, and mostly unpredicted," Kimm said, "and USAID has been associated in some way with most of them." . . .

The new Leo L. and Joan Kraft Laskoff Professorship in Economics, Technology and Environment was dedicated yesterday.

David Angel, Clark’s associate provost and dean of graduate studies and research, has been named the first to hold the chair. Angel, an expert on economic geography and former head of Clark’s Geography Department, is active in Clark’s collaboration with US-AEP.