Singh S, Rajamani S
Dept of Environmental Technology, Central Leather Research Institute, Adyar, Chennai 600 020, India.
Water Sci Technol. 2003;47(12):301-4.
Environmental laws define the scarcity of environmental resources as they affect the factor endowment of a country and therefore its position in the international division of labour. There is now also a general agreement that applying the "polluter pays" principle should solve environmental problems. As the burden of abatement increases, as measured by the ratio of abatement expenditure to sales, there is definitely an incentive for firms to either invest in cleaner technology or more efficient abatement technology. There is also evidence that taxes and charges, designed to internalise externalities, can actually affect trade. It is interesting to know if the developing countries face particular market access problems in the face of stringent environmental standards and regulations. While it is true that stringent measures impose market access restrictions and cause limitations on competitiveness, this is much more widely felt by the developing countries because of lack of infrastructure and monitoring facilities, limited technology choices, inadequate access to environment-friendly raw materials, lack of complete information, presence of small-scale exporters and emergence of environmental standards in sectors of export interest to developing countries. The small and medium enterprises often divert sales either to the domestic market or to external markets where environmental requirements are less stringent, in order to save on their costs. In developing countries, 80% of the tanning industry is comprised of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) processing raw to semi-finished leather, usually less than 2 tons per day. In Europe and other developed countries the SMEs in the leather sector have vanished due to strict environmental legislation and this will likely occur in developing countries also. The environmental legislation has not always been practical, either because the laws are too ambitious or unrealistic in certain parameters, or because they have lacked effective instrumentation and institutional support. Some environmental regulations have not succeeded as they do not match the technical requirements and economic reality of the country or region, or because they do not take the institutional capabilities of the society that has to implement them into consideration. For the survival and sustenance of the SMEs in the leather industry, it may be a viable alternative to carry out the tanning process in a decentralized fashion such that the raw to semi-finished process is carried out in the large scale sector while the semi-finished to finished process could either be reserved or open to competition as per the countries' requirements. But the issue of concern is whether it is fair that the raw to semi-finished tanning process, containing 70% of the pollution discharge should be undertaken by developing countries alone, especially if it is at the cost of their survival! However, the game analysed in the paper reveals that tanning units in developing countries would prefer to comply with the regulations and stay in the industry, the alternatives being to collude or to compete!
环境法界定了环境资源的稀缺性，因为它们影响一个国家的要素禀赋，进而影响其在国际分工中的地位。目前还有一个普遍的共识，即应用“污染者付费”原则应该能够解决环境问题。随着减排负担的增加，以减排支出与销售额的比率来衡量，企业肯定有动力投资于更清洁的技术或更高效的减排技术。也有证据表明，旨在使外部性内部化的税收和收费实际上会影响贸易。了解发展中国家在面对严格的环境标准和法规时是否面临特殊的市场准入问题很有意思。诚然，严格的措施会施加市场准入限制并导致竞争力受限，但发展中国家对此感受更为强烈，原因在于缺乏基础设施和监测设施、技术选择有限、获取环保原材料的机会不足、信息不完整、存在小规模出口商以及发展中国家感兴趣的出口部门出现了环境标准。中小企业往往将销售转向国内市场或环境要求不那么严格的外部市场，以节省成本。在发展中国家，80%的制革行业由中小企业组成，这些企业将生皮加工成半成品皮革，通常每天加工量不到2吨。在欧洲和其他发达国家，由于严格的环境立法，皮革行业的中小企业已经消失，发展中国家可能也会出现这种情况。环境立法并不总是切实可行的，要么是因为法律在某些参数方面过于雄心勃勃或不切实际，要么是因为它们缺乏有效的手段和机构支持。一些环境法规没有成功，要么是因为它们与国家或地区所需的技术要求和经济现实不匹配，要么是因为它们没有考虑到必须执行这些法规的社会的机构能力。为了皮革行业中小企业能够生存和维持下去，以分散的方式进行制革过程可能是一种可行的选择，即生皮到半成品的过程在大规模部门进行，而半成品到成品的过程可以根据国家要求保留或开放竞争。但令人担忧的问题是，包含70%污染排放的生皮到半成品制革过程仅由发展中国家承担是否公平，特别是如果这是以它们的生存为代价的话！然而，本文分析的博弈表明，发展中国家的制革单位更愿意遵守法规并留在该行业，其他选择是勾结或竞争！
