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POLLUTER PAYS PRINCIPLE
A few weeks back Canada 's Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Imperial Oil (Edmonton , AB), seeking to overturn a ruling that required it to pay for cleanup of a fuel depot the company had operated at Levis , PQ .
The company's attorneys argued that the cleanup order issued by Quebec Government was a conflict of interest because it would save the provincial government from having to pay money in another lawsuit. Residents living near the contaminated site were in the process of suing the government to recoup money lost through diminished property value.
The Supreme Court rejected the argument. "The Government has the responsibility of protecting the public interest in the environment and make its decisions in consideration of that interest," the court ruled.
The Canadian Chemical Producers' Association (CCPA) says that their preliminary review of the ruling indicates that it will not have broad influence on the country's site remediation lawsuits. The ruling addresses a specific charge of conflict or interest and therefore applies to a more narrow set of circumstances.
Canada does not have a programme similar to Superfund in the US .
Will the above judgment be a trend setter?
The above judgment of Canadian Supreme Court may become a trend setter and should be taken note of by the judiciary as well as chemical industries .
The most serious problem confronted by the chemical industries is, ofcourse the need to produce of products without harming the environment. While various steps have been initiated by chemical industries all over the world in ensuring environmental cleanliness while producing goods,ultimately the permission to operate chemical industries can only be a compromise decision.
In future, as environmental requirements would become a more crucial subject, chemical industries are likely to face more difficult conditions.
However until recently, chemical industries have only been ordered to close down the operation due to environmental violation but have not been asked to compensate the public and society for whatever harm that its operation could have caused to the environmental scenario.
The judgement of Canadian Supreme Court brings out a new dimension, where the polluters have been asked to pay and compensate for harm that have been created.
In many cases, this could well be beyond capacity of the chemical industries to pay. Such conditions may possibly deter more and more players from venturing into chemical industries in future.
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BILLION DOLLAR BUSINESS
Every two years, Indonesia loses about four million hectares of forest, an area roughly the size of Switzerland , to rapacious logging.
Skies in Northern China glow orange due to sand storms that cross the Pacific and lay dust on the Western US .
In Hong Kong , raw sewage bobs in its pearl blue harbour.
According to one senior United Nations environmental official, from inner Mongolia to the Indian subcontinent and tropical Southeast Asia, the region's ecology and environment is deteriorating even as its factories and economies boom.
Governments are rolling out unprecedented initiatives to tackle Asian pollution. There are policy initiatives that have been taken and laws enacted and so on, but the problem is the actual implementation.
Six of the world's 15 most polluted cities are in Asia and the region generates a third of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. In Asia 's developing regions, around 785 million people lack regular access to safe water, UN statistics show.
But there are pockets of improvement.
The air quality which has been notoriously polluted Bangkok , Dhaka , New Delhi and several Chinese cities is healthier now, after most of Asia , except for Indonesia , phased out lead from gasoline.
Bangladesh, which is spending $30 million over two years to bring natural gas to 100 petrol stations, is replacing high polluting two stroke engines in its rickshaw taxis in the capital Dhaka with cleaner burning natural gas power.
Thailand 's "tuk tuk" taxis now run on liquefied petroleum gas, while buses and taxis in New Delhi and Mumbai are phasing out diesel and running instead on compressed natural gas. This could be very much the story of the future.
Fixing Asia 's environmental mess - from stifling sandstroms and rapid soil erosion in China to treating sewage in Indian rivers and Southeast Asian air pollution - is turning into a billion dollar business.
US Department of Commerce is sending an "Environmental Technologies Trade Mission" to Malaysia , Thailand and Vietnam next March to scout for opportunities for US companies, citing "significant" potential for US business.
It estimates that Malaysia 's "environmental market" is worth around $800 million, mostly for safe water supply and sewage treatment and says that Thailand needs to spend around $1.2 to $1.5 billion on clean water and sanitation by 2020.
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News and Views 
January 2004
