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Asia under pressure for eco-friendly industries |
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July 27, 2000
SINGAPORE (AP) - Asia is coming under pressure to make its industries environment-friendly, delegates said at an international forum Wednesday. The world's markets will increasingly demand goods produced by "clean" industries, said Simon Tay, chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. "If Southeast Asia is to remain competitive, environmentalism has to be blended in" with growth, Tay said at the forum in Singapore. Environmental concerns were a force behind a recent spate of violent anti-globalization protests such as those that stalled the World Trade Organization's meeting in Seattle last November, conference participants said. Owen Cylke, policy group director of the U.S.-Asia Environmental Partnership, said ecology was the responsibility of Southeast Asia's business community. The US-AEP is an environmental consulting network set up by the U.S. federal government. Many Asian countries have yet to install 80 percent of the industrial equipment they will have by the year 2015, Cylke said. The region - which has the world's fastest-growing industrial sector - can improve the future of the global environment by choosing new, "clean" industrial technology, Cylke said. Representatives of the US-AEP and the Greening of Industry Network were joined by environmental specialists from the Asian Development Bank and other government and industry groups at the forum, called "Greening the Millennium." The Greening of Industry Network is an environmental policy research group with centers in the United States, Thailand and the Netherlands.
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