Industrial Transformation in the Developing World

‘Grow first, clean up later’ environmental strategies in the developing economies of East Asia – China, Korea, and Taiwan in Northeast Asia and Indonesia, Malaysia, the Phillippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam in Southeast Asia – pose a critical regional and global sustainability challenge in this area of continuing rapid urban-based industrial growth. It is the most polluted region in the world. Whilst being at the leading edge of the processes of urbanization, industrialization, and globalization these economies are in the midst, not at the end, of their urban-industrial transformations. During the next 25 years urban populations in the region are expected roughly to double, and most of the industrial capital stock that will be on the ground by 2030 has not yet been built. Given East Asia’s growing size in the world’s economy and ecology, and its increasingly polluted environment, this looming urban-industrial transformation is both a challenge and an opportunity. Unless steps are taken now to make this transformation more sustainable, East Asia’s, and the world’s, environmental future is likely to deteriorate seriously.
Using detailed case studies and rigorous empirical analyses Rock and Angel, leading experts in this field, show that East Asian governments have found institutionally unique ways to overcome the sustainability challenge. As a result of these findings, they demonstrate how even low income economies in the rest of the world can use regulatory polices, industrial policies, and an openness to trade and foreign investment that will increase the competitiveness of their firms whilst improving their environmental performance, thus proving an important antidote to those who argue that poor countries cannot afford to clean up their environment whilst their economies remain under-developed.

Author Biography

Michael T. Rock has lived and taught in Thailand and Vietnam; has served as senior economist of the Winrock International Institute for Agricultural Development, a development NGO established by the Rockefeller family. Received PhD in economics from the University of Pittsburgh. Recently awarded a grant from the Ministry of the Economy, Trade and Industry in Japan to study energy intensity in the pulp and paper industry in China, the US National Science Foundation
to study the environmental behaviour of cement plants in China, Malaysia and Thailand, and a MacArthur Foundation grant to study the integration of industrial policy with environmental policy in China
and Taiwan. Has consulted for the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Asia Foundation, the UN Development Program and the UN Industrial Development Organization. David P. Angel holds degrees from Cambridge University and UCLA; he is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including an Abe Fellowship awarded by the Center for Global Partnership in conjunction with the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies. His research includes work
conducted for the US Department of Commerce, the US Agency for International Development, the Asian Development Bank, and the MacArthur Foundation. He has consulted widely for public and private organizations
around the world.