Origins and Consequences of Farm-Level Pollution in Emerging East Asia
limited work has been carried out to valuate, in economic terms, the various impacts of polluting farming practices. Nonetheless, enough is understood to point to a number of farming patterns that are making critical contributions to the East Asia region’s pollution woes. Furthermore, a plethora of pollutants—and the complex impacts to which they lead—have the potential to be addressed through the reexamination of a smaller number of agricultural structures and practices. In particular, enough is known for policy makers to recognize that the areas presented in table 1.3 are priorities. Recognizing these challenges and opportunities, governments have begun to react. China has taken the most steps within the East Asia region to rein in pollution, as the heavy costs of rampant pollution have turned the matter into a simmering public concern. China has also probably gone the furthest in establishing agriculture sector–specific laws, regulations, and incentive programs to monitor, prevent, and control pollution. In fact, it may now be turning a corner in starting to address the issue more strategically, with greater attention to prevention and to taking successful approaches to scale. In Vietnam, many government efforts to limit and control agricultural pollution are also under way because its effects are being felt ever more widely, although they remain more reactive and experimental, and in some cases donor-led. In the Philippines, where agricultural pollution is less severe overall, or rather more localized, the government has yet to tackle agricultural pollution head-on in the sense that it has adopted fewer agriculture-specific laws and programs. In general, however, agricultural pollution has seemingly yet to become a top priority or a mainstream agricultural policy issue in the East Asia region, and it is not treated as the cross-cutting policy issue that it is. This may explain why even good laws and regulations are underenforced in many cases, and why even welldesigned incentive programs sometimes lack the muster they would need to change farming practices on a large scale and in lasting ways. Some programs do not lack resources as much as they face headwinds, some of which stem from the persistence of conflicting policies. This lack of coordination can lead to unhelpful uses of public resources and missed opportunities to use those resources in more supportive ways. In the future, the success of governments in addressing agricultural pollution will be judged, at the broadest level, by their ability to transition from a reactive and rehabilitative mode to a more proactive one that more effectively prevents damage and leverages the economic opportunity embedded in the act of tackling a challenge of such complexity and magnitude. Looking ahead to solutions, chapter 2 of this report provides general guidance on possible reorientations of policy.
The Challenge of Agricultural Pollution • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-1201-9
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