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Global pollution
June 1 9 7 1 • Volume 2 • Number 6
Global Pollution Nobody needs to be told that pollution of the sea is a world-wide problem, yet to most, it means only that certain pollutants such as the organochlorine pesticides have become widely distributed by air and ocean currents. But there is another aspect of the problem which, while it is not particularly pressing at the moment, may well become so in the future. This is the export of pollution problems from one country to another, a problem that will become increasingly widespread as international commerce expands. Problems of effluent disposal and pollution are only t o o familiar in the industrialized, developed countries of the world, but they are not simply a rich man's disease as the poorer developing countries are discovering. For a time, they regarded pollution control as a luxury they could not afford while they were struggling to develop their industries and exploit their natural resources, or, more importantly, to attract foreign capital and industry. This in itself was diliicult enough without accepting the added burden of installing expensive sewage or industrial effluent treatment plants. Now there is some sign that this attitude is changing and that a longer-term view is being adopted. There is a second type of developing countrymthe wealthy countries such as Australia--which, like the poor countries, have an economy heavily dependent upon the supply of primary products to the industrialized world but which at the same time are undergoing rapid industrialization themselves. Unlike the poorer countries, they are well able to afford the cost of pollution control, but simply because they are further along the path of development they are beginning to experience in an acute form pollution problems which are directly or indirectly imported from elsewhere. The export of problems of effluent disposal from the developed to the developing countries is sometimes
F o u l n e s s -- d o o m o f t h e B r e n t G o o s e E f f e c t s of t h e r m a l p o l l u t i o n
Macmillan Journals Limited
•
quite overt as a recent case in Queensland shows. The State has an important coal exporting trade which it would gladly expand. Coke manufacture has not been a very significant industry and, indeed, a large coke plant was recently on the point of closing down. Britain, the United States and Japan have all expressed an interest in the development of a coke plant there with a capacity of a million tons per annum. According to Mr Carom, the Queensland Minister of Mines, countries such as Japan are keen on overseas processing of this kind because it helps reduce their own pollution problems. Since for many effluents, damage is caused only when there is too great an effluent load in too small an area, this argument may be a reasonable one in the present instance, but dearly the philosophy underlying it bodes ill for the developing countries if it is applied for a sufficient time. The transfer of pollution problems to the countries producing basic materials may not always be as obvious as this. By importing meat and dairy products to sustain their large populations, the developed countries export the problem of dealing with farm waste which in Australia and, still more, New Zealand is creating difficulties on a mounting scale. By importing refined sugar, the developed countries leave behind with the producers, the problem of dealing with raw sugar mill and sugar refinery wastes. The transfer of pollution problems is, of coarse, a .two-way process. Developing countries import manufactured goods in exchange for their raw materials and primary, products, leaving the corresponding problems of industrial effluent disposal with the manufacturing countries. The burden and the problems are thus disudbuted throughout the world, but it is not generally appreciated in the affluent countries with their high consumption of raw materials how much of the problem of effluent disposal is transmitted to the developing
*
Mr Walker's toughness
GNPlarea--a
examined
m e a s u r e of n a t i o n a l p o l l u t i o n
35p U.K.
GLOBAL POLLUTION
page 81
News Farewell the Brent Starfish kill Stilbaii oil spill fumble US Navy suspends dumping Mr Walker's eight point plan Taste of a tougher policy
82 83 83 84 84 85
Reports Reflections on a ministerial judgement J. R. Lewis Environmental changes associated with a Florida power plant M. A. Roessler Ecological implications of breakwater construction in Monterey Harbour E. C. Haderlie Reconnaissance of an oil spill R. H. Loucks and D. J. Lawrence GNP/area ratio as a measure of national
pollution
85
87 90 92
94
E. D. Goldberg and K. K. Bertine
Publications Conferences
96 96
countries, many of which have not the background knowledge, trained personnel or resources to combat the problem effectively. A further complicating factor is the enormous growth of the tourist industry throughout the world. The highlands of New Guinea may not be like Coney Island yet, but they are not far from the regular tourist track and a cluster of grass huts on a remote Pacific island is as likely to be a budding resort as a native paradise. In many countries, tourism occupies a significant place in the national economy and in a few it dominates it. Tourists and holiday makers travel for many reasons, but a very. large number of them are attracted to the
sun and the sea and, with increasing affluence are able to go to remote, exotic places. There are already signs of major growth of the tourist industry in the tropics and sub-tropics and this is likely to continue and have an increasing impact on the developing countries. Governments tend to look at balance sheets when it comes to making decisions and the value of tourism can be assessed on a cash basis and set against the economic value of an industrial development and the cost of controlling it and its effluents. Tourists are not attracted to areas where the physical environment has bexm mutilated or to waters which are fouled and depleted of life. It would be nice to think that the economic pressures of tourism would counter the pressures of industrial development and provide an economic incentive to pollution control. Unfortunately this appears to be true only to a trivial extent. While the Italian Government has been worried for some time that the heavily polluted coastal waters of the country would drive away the tourists which are so important to the country's economy, there is no sign that the tourist trade has suffered in the least. Tourism evidently cannot be relied upon to encourage a significant clean water policy. The interests of the tourist industry are certainly likely to have some influence on the siting of industry, though even here experience suggests that the tolel"ance of the average tourist is extremely high. What is more important is that providing tourist amenities creates just as much coastal havoc in the form of landfill, impoundments and the like, as any industrial development. To the extent that developing countries respond to the economic potential of the burgeoning tourist industry, they will suffer the impairment of their coastal environmental resources that is only too familiar in Florida and parts of the Mediterranean. Since the tourists come from the industrialized developed countries, yet another type of environmental management problem is being exported to the developing areas. Pollution control is becoming a universal problem and not simply because pollutants are distributed by ocean CUiTents.
Farewell the Brent The decision to build London's third airport at Foulness in the Thames Estuary is another sickening example of the treatment of estuarine wetlands as wastelands. It is true that, as far as conservation was concerned, the government and the Royal Commission were choosing the lesser of a number of evils, but at the same time the fact cannot be ignored that in " ~ t i n g off an entire population of Brent Geese, they may also have brought to an end the already tragic history, of a complete race of wildfowl, for Foulness represents a large part of the wintering grounds of the Dark-Bellied Brent Goose and may be vital to the bird's precarious existence in Europe. The Dark-Bellied Brent Goose breeds only in the grim coastal areas of northern Siberia where the snow 82
persists for all but a few weeks of the year, placing a drastic restriction on the breeding rate. At the end of the summer the birds migrate over 3,000 miles to the estuarine mudflats of NW Europe. Here they are almost exclusively maritime, feeding mostly on the eelgrass Zostera, one of the few flowering plants growing in the intertidal zone. It is the rigidity in their breeding and feeding habitats which underlies their precarious existence and which has already brought about their near extinction once this century. In the 1930s the Zostera beds of the habitat were almost completely wiped out by disease and the Brent population crashed to barely 10% of the nineteenth century population. Since then the Brent has made a slow recovery and now the total world population fluctuates in the 25-30,000
Global Pollution Nobody needs to be told that pollution of the sea is a world-wide problem, yet to most, it means only that certain pollutants such as the organochlorine pesticides have become widely distributed by air and ocean currents. But there is another aspect of the problem which, while it is not particularly pressing at the moment, may well become so in the future. This is the export of pollution problems from one country to another, a problem that will become increasingly widespread as international commerce expands. Problems of effluent disposal and pollution are only t o o familiar in the industrialized, developed countries of the world, but they are not simply a rich man's disease as the poorer developing countries are discovering. For a time, they regarded pollution control as a luxury they could not afford while they were struggling to develop their industries and exploit their natural resources, or, more importantly, to attract foreign capital and industry. This in itself was diliicult enough without accepting the added burden of installing expensive sewage or industrial effluent treatment plants. Now there is some sign that this attitude is changing and that a longer-term view is being adopted. There is a second type of developing countrymthe wealthy countries such as Australia--which, like the poor countries, have an economy heavily dependent upon the supply of primary products to the industrialized world but which at the same time are undergoing rapid industrialization themselves. Unlike the poorer countries, they are well able to afford the cost of pollution control, but simply because they are further along the path of development they are beginning to experience in an acute form pollution problems which are directly or indirectly imported from elsewhere. The export of problems of effluent disposal from the developed to the developing countries is sometimes
F o u l n e s s -- d o o m o f t h e B r e n t G o o s e E f f e c t s of t h e r m a l p o l l u t i o n
Macmillan Journals Limited
•
quite overt as a recent case in Queensland shows. The State has an important coal exporting trade which it would gladly expand. Coke manufacture has not been a very significant industry and, indeed, a large coke plant was recently on the point of closing down. Britain, the United States and Japan have all expressed an interest in the development of a coke plant there with a capacity of a million tons per annum. According to Mr Carom, the Queensland Minister of Mines, countries such as Japan are keen on overseas processing of this kind because it helps reduce their own pollution problems. Since for many effluents, damage is caused only when there is too great an effluent load in too small an area, this argument may be a reasonable one in the present instance, but dearly the philosophy underlying it bodes ill for the developing countries if it is applied for a sufficient time. The transfer of pollution problems to the countries producing basic materials may not always be as obvious as this. By importing meat and dairy products to sustain their large populations, the developed countries export the problem of dealing with farm waste which in Australia and, still more, New Zealand is creating difficulties on a mounting scale. By importing refined sugar, the developed countries leave behind with the producers, the problem of dealing with raw sugar mill and sugar refinery wastes. The transfer of pollution problems is, of coarse, a .two-way process. Developing countries import manufactured goods in exchange for their raw materials and primary, products, leaving the corresponding problems of industrial effluent disposal with the manufacturing countries. The burden and the problems are thus disudbuted throughout the world, but it is not generally appreciated in the affluent countries with their high consumption of raw materials how much of the problem of effluent disposal is transmitted to the developing
*
Mr Walker's toughness
GNPlarea--a
examined
m e a s u r e of n a t i o n a l p o l l u t i o n
35p U.K.
GLOBAL POLLUTION
page 81
News Farewell the Brent Starfish kill Stilbaii oil spill fumble US Navy suspends dumping Mr Walker's eight point plan Taste of a tougher policy
82 83 83 84 84 85
Reports Reflections on a ministerial judgement J. R. Lewis Environmental changes associated with a Florida power plant M. A. Roessler Ecological implications of breakwater construction in Monterey Harbour E. C. Haderlie Reconnaissance of an oil spill R. H. Loucks and D. J. Lawrence GNP/area ratio as a measure of national
pollution
85
87 90 92
94
E. D. Goldberg and K. K. Bertine
Publications Conferences
96 96
countries, many of which have not the background knowledge, trained personnel or resources to combat the problem effectively. A further complicating factor is the enormous growth of the tourist industry throughout the world. The highlands of New Guinea may not be like Coney Island yet, but they are not far from the regular tourist track and a cluster of grass huts on a remote Pacific island is as likely to be a budding resort as a native paradise. In many countries, tourism occupies a significant place in the national economy and in a few it dominates it. Tourists and holiday makers travel for many reasons, but a very. large number of them are attracted to the
sun and the sea and, with increasing affluence are able to go to remote, exotic places. There are already signs of major growth of the tourist industry in the tropics and sub-tropics and this is likely to continue and have an increasing impact on the developing countries. Governments tend to look at balance sheets when it comes to making decisions and the value of tourism can be assessed on a cash basis and set against the economic value of an industrial development and the cost of controlling it and its effluents. Tourists are not attracted to areas where the physical environment has bexm mutilated or to waters which are fouled and depleted of life. It would be nice to think that the economic pressures of tourism would counter the pressures of industrial development and provide an economic incentive to pollution control. Unfortunately this appears to be true only to a trivial extent. While the Italian Government has been worried for some time that the heavily polluted coastal waters of the country would drive away the tourists which are so important to the country's economy, there is no sign that the tourist trade has suffered in the least. Tourism evidently cannot be relied upon to encourage a significant clean water policy. The interests of the tourist industry are certainly likely to have some influence on the siting of industry, though even here experience suggests that the tolel"ance of the average tourist is extremely high. What is more important is that providing tourist amenities creates just as much coastal havoc in the form of landfill, impoundments and the like, as any industrial development. To the extent that developing countries respond to the economic potential of the burgeoning tourist industry, they will suffer the impairment of their coastal environmental resources that is only too familiar in Florida and parts of the Mediterranean. Since the tourists come from the industrialized developed countries, yet another type of environmental management problem is being exported to the developing areas. Pollution control is becoming a universal problem and not simply because pollutants are distributed by ocean CUiTents.
Farewell the Brent The decision to build London's third airport at Foulness in the Thames Estuary is another sickening example of the treatment of estuarine wetlands as wastelands. It is true that, as far as conservation was concerned, the government and the Royal Commission were choosing the lesser of a number of evils, but at the same time the fact cannot be ignored that in " ~ t i n g off an entire population of Brent Geese, they may also have brought to an end the already tragic history, of a complete race of wildfowl, for Foulness represents a large part of the wintering grounds of the Dark-Bellied Brent Goose and may be vital to the bird's precarious existence in Europe. The Dark-Bellied Brent Goose breeds only in the grim coastal areas of northern Siberia where the snow 82
persists for all but a few weeks of the year, placing a drastic restriction on the breeding rate. At the end of the summer the birds migrate over 3,000 miles to the estuarine mudflats of NW Europe. Here they are almost exclusively maritime, feeding mostly on the eelgrass Zostera, one of the few flowering plants growing in the intertidal zone. It is the rigidity in their breeding and feeding habitats which underlies their precarious existence and which has already brought about their near extinction once this century. In the 1930s the Zostera beds of the habitat were almost completely wiped out by disease and the Brent population crashed to barely 10% of the nineteenth century population. Since then the Brent has made a slow recovery and now the total world population fluctuates in the 25-30,000