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There is no longer any serious debate about whether greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are altering the earth's climate. There is also a broad consensus that efficient mitigation of emissions will require carbon pricing via market based instruments (charges or auctioned tradable permits). The remaining controversies stem mostly from economic and technological forecasting uncertainties, disputes about global and intergenerational equity, and political divisions over collective measures to combat climate change. Near term closure seems unlikely on any of these fronts, but the science is now sufficiently compelling that a global consensus supports concerted action. Developing countries must be full participants, because they will be most heavily impacted by global warming, and because the scale of their emissions is rapidly approaching parity with developed countries.

Poor countries suffer from serious environmental damage, and much more pollution control is justifiable. Weak regulation is partly to blame, but the evidence suggests that it reflects a general development problem, not deliberate creation of "pollution havens" to promote investment and trade. Aid from the OECD countries can help reduce pollution in poor countries by promoting better public information about polluters, stronger regulatory institutions, and more explicit attention to environmental risks in large projects. However, attempts to enforce OECD-level regulatory standards through general trade and aid sanctions are both regressive and useless: regressive because they penalize workers in poor countries by reducing opportunities for jobs and higher wages; useless because governments of low-income countries can not deliver on promises of OECD-level regulation, even if they wish to do so.

Poor countries suffer from serious environmental damage, & much more pollution control is justifiable. Weak regulation is partly to blame, but the evidence suggests that it reflects a general development problem, not deliberate creation of "pollution havens" to promote investment & trade. Aid from the OECD countries can help reduce pollution in poor countries by promoting better public information about polluters, stronger regulatory institutions, & more explicit attention to environmental risks in large projects. However, attempts to enforce OECD-level regulatory standards through general trade & aid sanctions are both regressive & useless: regressive because they penalize workers in poor countries by reducing opportunities for jobs & higher wages; useless because governments of low-income countries cannot deliver on promises of OECD-level regulation, even if they wish to do so. 42 References. Adapted from the source document.

Critics of free trade have raised the specter of a "race to the bottom" in which environmental standards collapse because polluters threaten to relocate to "pollution havens" in the developing world. Proponents of this view advocate high, globally uniform standards enforced by punitive trade measures that neutralize the cost advantage of would-be pollution havens. To test the race-to-the-bottom model, the author analyzes recent air quality trends in the United States and the three largest recipients of foreign investment in the developing world: China, Brazil, and Mexico. The evidence clearly contradicts the model's central prediction: The most dangerous form of air pollution has actually declined in major cities of all four countries during the era of globalization. Citing recent research, the author argues that the race-to-the-bottom model is flawed because its basic assumptions misrepresent the political economy of pollution control in developing countries.

AbstractThe application of some forms of environmental auditing by business is growing. While there are a range of motivations which are commonly cited for undertaking the environmental audit, auditing for sustainability is not usually the principle reason given. This article explains The Body Shop's aim to audit for sustainability and outlines their experiences in its application. Copyright © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.