ABSTRACT
As East Asia’s high-speed export-oriented economic development strategy enters its third decade, many Asian citizens have begun to ask themselves whether the price they have paid for rapid economic growth was worth it. For despite the constant self-congratulation of government and business for creating economic “miracles” in East Asia, accumulating evidence suggests that the other face of high-speed growth is an environmental tragedy of massive proportions (Bello and Rosenfeld 1992). In South Korea, for instance, where the highest priority of the dictatorship from the 1960s forward was economic expansion, and all perceived barriers to that growth were brutally suppressed, rapid industrialization left indelible marks on the landscape; the consequences of environmental neglect are found in the country’s poisoned air and water (Eder 1996). In Taiwan, rapid economic development has also put tremendous pressure on the island’s resource base. Whereas the most visible symptoms include water and energy shortages and various types of pollution, the most critical issue centers around abuses of land-use zoning that adversely impacted fragile 4areas like slope lands and coastal fishing grounds (Edmonds 1996). In Hong Kong, where the industrial restructuring process led to a relocation of industry from Hong Kong to Southern China in the last two decades, the job of identifying the causes of environmental problems in the territory itself—such as ambient air and surface water pollution—has been made more complicated (Ng and Ng 1997).
