Inadequate systems for monitoring industrial growth

In Thailand, rapid industrial growth has raised hazardous waste generation to 1.9 million tons per year in 1990, and industry's share has doubled to 58 percent in a decade. A four-fold increase in the volume of hazardous waste is expected by 2001. Conventional biodegradable industrial wastes are also rising rapidly, severely polluting rivers and estuaries. Until recently, the government of Thailand did not insist that new investments include adequate emissions controls.

Rapid industrialization in China, much of it associated with increased openness to international trade, has generated environmental problems. Industrial wastewater discharges more than doubled in the latter half of the 1980s, far outstripping treatment capacities and heavily polluting surface and groundwaters. Consequently, most of the urban Chinese population depends on unsafe drinking water, with severe health consequences. For example, a massive epidemic of hepatitis A in Shanghai afflicted 300,000 people.

In Indonesia, industrial output has increase 8-fold since 1970 and is expected to grow another 13-fold by 2020. Three-quarters of all industry is located on the small island of Java, 60 percent in urban areas. Industrial and household effluent loadings have grossly polluted most urban surface and groundwater supplies. Consequently, even after treatment, most drinking water supplies are contaminated. Rapid growth of energy use, especially by vehicles, has degraded urban air quality beyond health limits: in Jakarta, for example, 28 percent of women and children suffer from respiratory disease. Projections of future industrialization suggest that total emissions of conventional air and water pollutants will increase six-fold over the next twenty years.