End 'hypocrisy' on environment: WEF forum told

The World Economic Forum on East Asia heard contending views Monday about who is responsible for global environmental damage, with one official accusing developed nations of hypocrisy. Malaysia's Second Minister of Finance Nor Mohamed Yakcop said "the companies that are polluting in China are owned by Americans and Europeans and Japanese and others.
They are benefitting from the cheap labour. They are benefitting from the resources." On that basis, he said it is a mistake to single out China or other developing countries as the culprits. "It's wrong ... There should be no hypocrisy," Yakcop told the forum attended by about 300 business leaders, government officials and other delegates.
China's economic boom has given rise to massive and harmful pollution nation-wide. A Dutch research body said last week that China for the first time spewed out more carbon-dioxide emissions last year than the United States.
But Ralph Peterson, chairman and chief executive officer of CH2M Hill Companies, said Asian nations were using a disproportionate amount of energy relative to their rates of growth.
He said China accounts for 5.5 percent of global output but uses 15 percent of the world's energy, a pattern repeated among the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean). "These are disproportionate" figures, said Peterson, of the US-based global engineering and construction project firm.
Malaysia and Indonesia, the world's leading producers of crude palm oil, are leading a campaign to fight environmentalist claims that their plantations destroy vast swathes of tropical forest, pushing endangered animals such as the orang-utan towards extinction.
"Countries without trees keep telling the countries with trees to stop chopping them down and to slow down growth. We can't slow down growth because we have plenty of poverty left," said Yakcop, adding that growth and environmental protection were not mutually exclusive.
Peterson noted China and Vietnam have taken steps to address environmental concerns, but he called on multinational corporations to take the lead and redirect into sustainable growth some of the savings they make by operating in developing countries.
"We're all in it together," Peterson said. Vietnam's first Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Sinh Hung made his own call for developed countries to contribute to environmental preservation.
"We need cooperation also from outside of Vietnam," Nguyen said. Like Malaysia's Yakcop, Nguyen spoke of the importance of reducing poverty, which Vietnam wants to see lowered to 10 percent from 20 percent of the population currently. "With the well-being of the people, then sustainable development can be meaningful," Nguyen said.