Cleaning up costs. But assessing the costs is a tough task. The Asian Development Bank has made some calculations on the need for environment-related spending for the Asia-Pacific region till the year 2025. These figures show that the costs will increase by 7.2 per cent every year from now to 2025 when the total costs will be $244 billion. This growth will be twice the projected average growth rate of GDP.

The maximum growth will be seen in cleaning up industrial waste which will grow by 19.5 per cent every year and be about $ 48 billion. Transaportation related costs will be high too. From about $ 8 billion in 2000, the costs will more than double to $19 billion. If all these were to be funded only by the public sector, ADB says, the fiscal burden would be intolerable. Thus new funding mechanism will need to be devised.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.