Proceedings of the UNESCO - University of Tsukuba International Seminar on Traditional Technology for Environmental Conservation and Sustainable Development in the Asian-Pacific Region, held in Tsukuba Science City, Japan, 11-14 December, 1995.
Editors: Kozo Ishizuka, D. Sc. , Shigeru Hisajima, D. Sc. , Darryl R.J. Macer, Ph.D.
Poot : Industrialization leads to rural to urban migration. As the paper notes, this is taking place in Thailand. Although with high population growth this may reduce rural unemployment and under employment, with low population growth it may have a detrimental effect on the viability of rural communities. My questions are, what has been the impact of urbanization on rural communities in Thailand?, and what policies did the government introduce to deal with this?
Subahdrabanhu : The government has realized this urbanization has occurred, with a transition to high income urban work. The government has a policy to influence many aspects. First the government encourages the establishment of factories outside the cities by economic incentives such as low interest loans. Second, education has been encouraged with the setting up of universities in rural areas. Third, government offices have been built in the rural areas, as decentralization. These efforts must be kept up continuously, and decentralization is the most urgent thing that the country must do at the present time in order to give equal opportunity to the rural and urban peoples. This is a problem as you suggested.
McAllister : With your paper and the commentators papers, I think we have a very good sense of what is happening in Thailand, the changes that are occurring and what the drivers for the industrial and economic changes are. Could you identify the drivers that might be responsible for harmonization between the economic needs, social needs and environmental needs. Are they local, or from the national government, foreign investors or NGOs?
Subahdrabanhu : This is a difficult question. To harmonize the society I think that the NGO does have some role, to a certain extent. But I am not sure how effective this is. Harmonization in the country has been achieved somewhat by the Thai culture, with His Majesty the King, who always goes up country to visit his people. This is a good way to unite the people and harmonize them into a way where everyone is involved. For example recently we had a flood, and every evening on television His Majesty came on to suggest ways to avoid the flood and milden it. Whenever we have a disaster the Thai people get together very fast.
Higano : I would like to give a comment. I am interested in your conclusion. How can Thailand, which is agricultural industry-orientated, continue to exist as a decentralized traditional independent society when the national economy has moved with industrialization. Because it may have drastically changed. In Japan in the 1960s there was industrialization and decentralization with increasing power given to local governments. It was sometimes a political campaign. Comparative analysis between Japan, Korea, and Thailand would be interesting.
Subahdrabanhu : I would say that Thailand is about 30 years behind Japan. I also should say I agree with what Prof. Iwahori has said about agriculture, as Thailand as become an exporter of rice it has been difficult given the international rice trade to sell to Japan. Our big customers are Indonesia and China who are now both self-sufficient in rice production. The rice price has dropped, hurting the farmers. Secondly, cassava which we used to sell to the EU common market, has been stopped and the price has dropped. Maize we used to sell as an animal feed to Japan, has become difficult as the Japanese buy more from Indonesia now. We need to diversify crops into more quality crops, with an aim to foreign exports. This is seen with the export of orchids to Japan, and about 80% of orchids in Japan come from Thailand. This diversification is very important to catch up with the international market.
Ryan : If there are no more questions, we will move to Prof. Bertram from New Zealand. Prof. Poot will give a commentary. We have some time for questions.
Higano : Thank you Geoff for your good presentation, and the exploration of the quasi-markets for quota systems is interesting. It looks at how to define the total emissions of countries in the North and the South, or developing and developed countries, and looks at the technical impacts on the solutions. One question is how to audit the quasi-market system, namely, how to check whether each country will follow the assigned permitted quota. Secondly, we have to consider different developmental stages between developed and developing countries. The quota for developing countries may need to be reduced as they develop. Thirdly, any market has a failure if it is related with this dynamic context.
Bertram : Prof. Higano raises three points, firstly enforcement, namely how do we check that countries observe their quota. I think that the only way we can make an international permit system work is that all countries must sign up so that no countries thinks it is a loser. That is a problem in Game Theory to design an agreement with which all countries feel they can live. That I believe can be done. Following from that countries must be bound to follow the limits laid down by their quota. If we want to see an example of this in practice we can see the Montreal Protocol which limits the production of CFCs. Once we have an international Convention in place, it is actually quite feasible to enforce it. This is especially going to be true if we have international trading in permits, because the world has mechanisms in place to regulate and enforce regulations that relate to international trade. Secondly with regard to the differences between developed and developing countries, the North and the South, I think one of the problems we have had with development in the 20th century is the extent to which technology has been developed and dispersed by the North, rather than the South. So that countries that are following the leaders have simply been adopting technologies developed in the North, and I think that many economists would prefer to see technologies that are developed indigenously in far more of the countries of the South. I think the problem that comes up in my paper is that in relation to an emissions trading regime there is a real risk that the South will not be able to keep the benefits related to its own regime. But this is extremely important with regard to policy and planning to encourage more efficient energy use. The third question was about the roles of the leaders and followers in developing the international system, and I would hope that in fact much of the design of the International Convention on the Greenhouse will be developed by governments of the South, that it is not simply left to governments of the North, which have the strongest vested interest at the present time in seeing such a Convention developed, to set the rules.
Ryan : Thank you Prof. Bertram, are there any other questions?
McAllister : I am not sure I understood, as there was unfamiliar language. The question of horrendous abatement costs has received considerable media publicity. The direct costs, reduced profits, have been discussed, but my impression is there has not been similar consideration of the costs of not abating which will also affect industry as well as people. For example I have a persimmon tree in my front yard which would be under water if sea level rises one metre. Who will pay for it? Would you care to comment on that?
Bertram : It will be lost. The losses from greenhouse warming will be deadweight losses from the world economy, they will be losses of production and economy as a result of changing climate. I think it is very difficult to estimate the costs of not abating, as you say, so that the IPCC work this year has failed to agree even on the methodology that we should use to estimate costs. There is disagreement over what the costs of a human life should be, and whether it is the same in the United States or Bangladesh, is there any reason that they should have a different value? But if we value all the lives in Bangladesh at the same value as we do for the United States the costs are indeed horrendous, because Bangladesh has a very large population at low level that would be under the most pressure from a rising sea level. So the attempt to use cost benefit analysis to identify abatement costs has so far been unsuccessful. This has been a very serious debate in the IPCC this year, which I think will continue for sometime. This is why the approach in this paper is only to look at the costs of abatement and to avoid the talk of greenhouse damage, which I think is still too difficult to resolve.
McAllister : Would this neglect for the costs of not abating, change the output of your model significantly?
Bertram : No, all it would do is to provide some scientific looking legitimacy for some particular level of global quota. I think that the world will actually set its quotas much more loosely and arbitrarily, not by cost-benefit analysis but by a sense of what can be achieved. What is fair and reasonable. This comes back to Jacques Poot's point about what is fair and reasonable, more now means less later, less now means more later. We can shift the effort.
McAllister : Can I ask if this is not one of the traditional problems of economics of technology, in that in developing a technology we often ignore the downstream costs to the general public.
Bertram : No I would deny that and say that this is an example of the economic analysis to address exactly that problem but not pretending to say that economists have all the answers.
Wilk : This was an interesting paper, and I think the results of the model are particularly interesting, that technological innovation will not necessarily make this model work any better. I was most interested however, in your Figure 1, and I think there are two ways to look at it. One way is the relationship between GDP per capita and carbon dioxide emissions per capita and see the regression line, and the second is to look at the incredibly wide variability around that regression line. There has been some recent interesting work on the per capita production of carbon dioxide per dollar of GDP which concentrates on this wide variability and it seems that a lot of it is not technical or technological differences between countries, rather it is differences in consumption styles, differences in consumer preferences, and differences in efficiencies within the country. The example given to me was Japan, where the amount of carbon dioxide emissions that result from space heating is considerably lower than those in the United States or most northern European countries. This is not due to technological differences as much as it is due to different consumption practices that Japanese houses are not heated in the same manner or to the same temperature as the other houses are. Assuming that this variability is due to technological differences, particularly in the industrial sector, rather than consumer behaviour, cultural differences, historical differences in the adoption of technology is dangerous. Because if we make those assumptions it suggests that the answers will be purely technological solutions rather than changes in consumption patterns, lifestyle and changes in consumer behavior in general.
Bertram : Yes, I agree with everything you have said. This is one of the reasons why in the debate between top-down and bottom-up analysts of the problem, the top-down modellers such as myself who assume that there will be resistance to innovation are much more pessimistic, for very good reasons, than the bottom-up analysts who simply say that if we adopt available technology there would not be a problem. However, all of the world is not going to reduce its emissions down to the level of the lowest emission per capita country. People are different and cultures are different. One cannot demand that cultures change their behavior across the world to a single uniform standard which is dictated by the engineers. That is not what economic progress is all about. Economic progress is to sustain and develop the cultures of the world, and the ways of life that now exist, and moving those forward, while at the same time bringing about a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. What I said is that this is the technological challenge for the next century, and I think this is exactly what it is. This is the central issue for the 21st century.
Ryan : Any further questions?
Macer : What is the affect if you reduce the number of quotas every year, does it result in an economic incentive to develop new technology?
Bertram : If you adjust the number of quotas over a time path, my back of the envelope method can tell you how the benefits are allocated over time for any rate of economic growth and rate of technological progress that you can assume, but you have to exogenously impose the rates of growth of economic activity and progress in the model to get the results. My comparative static result holds whatever the level of abatement is, that is the gains of technological progress over most of the range of feasible gains of abatement seem not to lie with the South, if you establish the sort of permit trading regime that I envisage. That I think is the policy concern.
Macer : Thank you. One announcement I want to make is for anybody who has suggestions on what should be included in the conference proposal to give these to me before lunch. Also please everyone who has asked a question please give it to one of the conference staff or myself before the conference ends.
Ryan : We now will have the paper of Dr Flores from the Philippines and a commentary by Prof. Goto. We have time only for a few questions.
Seki : In order to maintain the fisheries resources at the most desirable level in the marine environment, the government should be taking a great initiative by issuing licenses for commercial fishing. In Japan the government controls by issuing a license for commercial fishermen. I wonder if your country and other south-east Asian countries have this system for sustainable fishing and environmental conservation.
Flores : The issuance of fishing licenses is also being done in the Philippines for commercial fishing, more than three gross tonnes, and also for municipal fishermen there are licenses. There are many laws with reference to conservation of resources, but it seems that how to implement these is the problem, we do not have enough people to police the waters. Since legislation alone is not enough, it has led to users themselves doing management of the resources, this is as far as municipal fisheries is concerned, at a community level. At a commercial level this is where the government comes in, they are looking at the activities of particular groups for example, the activities of tuna long-liners, and the activities of bigger vessels.
Mazid : Regarding the problem of over-exploitation and socio-economic disadvantages of the poor fishing community, I would like to comment from my paper and Prof. Tanuichi's commentary who gave the global picture of total fish production. There is global production of over 100 million tonnes, with 84% coming from the sea, and the rest coming from aquaculture especially in Asian countries. Fishing has become very sophisticated, in respect of fishing gear and fishing vessels, which have contributed to more over-exploitation. In the years to come there will be even more over-exploitation because there will be more commercial development of fishing gear. In order to improve the socio-economic conditions of the fishermen it will not be possible by fishing rights or licenses. I think we need an alternative to provide fish for human consumption, which is aquaculture. If we can involve the world fishing community in aquaculture, it requires little input in the subtropical or tropical regions where you can culture throughout the year, and it requires only little improvement in management of stock densities and feeding etc., we can improve the production of aquaculture greatly. I would suggest that we transfer the aquaculture technology to the poor people and encourage aquaculture rather than fishing, which is a better way to increase their economic conditions of the fishing community. Fishing technology will improve the socio-economic conditions of the big companies fishing in the oceans.
Ryan : I am afraid I must ask my questions over lunch, we must move on to the paper by Dr Wilk from Indiana, USA, and the commentary by Dr Itagaki. It was good to have a lady presenter. Now we can have a few questions before lunch.
Macer : I just want to make a comment after two enjoyable papers, that people tend to prefer new technology over old technology. There are certain commercial advantages or incentives for this, one is the patent system and another is that companies tend to promote use of their technologies over traditional technologies. The word "biotechnology" is one I am most familiar with, and I always have to clarify to people that I am talking about biotechnology which started 8-10,000 years ago with agriculture, not the new genetic engineering. Maybe you have some comments on this?
Wilk : I think the issue of the interaction between capitalist firms, capital development and local people is an extremely important research area. I think that the linkages through markets, through universities and through research institutions, and the way that these linkages develop new technologies, are crucial. My own experience in developing countries is that capitalist firms and marketers of new products are themselves often very ineffective at creating new sustainable technologies. New technologies that sell particularly well tend to have a top-down notion of a single technology fix-all, that they can solve any problem by putting money into marketing, promotion and advertising. Historically in Latin America this has not worked very well, for either capitalists or local people, for instance, many times I have been working on small scale agricultural projects and in the USA or Latin America, you simply cannot buy small tractors or small farm equipment. We had a need for a 400 gallon per day capacity dairy plant, and we could find a minimum 4000 gallon per day capacity dairy plant. Perhaps with the Asian tradition of small-scale farming, and small entrepreneurs and village workshops you don't have the same problem that we have in Latin America, which is that we many big firms and very few small firms that are producing farm implements or fishing gear, that are useful. That is why whenever we need a small outboard motor or small capacity motorcycle we always buy Asian products instead of American products.
Bertram : Following on from that point, you mentioned the symbolic power of language when you discussed sustainability. The distinction between "traditional" and "modern" technologies in your presentation is too strong. All the symbolism of progress and modernity seem to have become tied up with large scale, unresponsive, centrally controlled, top-down technologies. The word traditional conveys a technological stigma. However, modern technology is now becoming small-scale and responsive, which are the characteristics that Dr Wilk used for what he calls "traditional technology". The world economy is moving into a new era, as also mentioned by Stephen Hill. The comparison you made could be reversed.
Wilk : That is a very good point. Really the reason why I made this comparison is so that I could destroy it, as I think this division between modern and traditional technology is a dangerous division, and one we should do away with. Because it prevents us from envisioning new technologies that have characteristics that we associate with traditional ones. It prevents us from thinking of ways that traditional technologies are more sophisticated than new ones in some cases. I only suggested this so that I could throw it away. I suggest the word "hybrid" as a substitute for these two terms.
Yang : I think that this reminds me of the need for more exploration of technology transfer, for example in the USA there is a formal country agency to promote farm technology. But because of the progress of information technology, apparently the country agency is losing its mission. I think this is a good lesson for developing countries to learn. One of our new vice presidents for research is from the University of Wisconsin, and he pointed out how dairy farmers there, call Monsanto Corporation rather than the country agency to solve the problems. Technology transfer needs to be considered or planned very carefully, but it can be very valuable.
Ryan : My latest book is on the transfer of technology, and combining new and traditional technology and combining large and small technology. It has been published in the USA by Bantam Publishers. I also have another book, both are full of case studies and those who would like a copy and like to know more should write to me. We must close for lunch and return for the closing session.