Over 50 organizations with international operations are currently spending many millions of dollars annually to promote Cleaner Production and related initiatives in Asia. Most national governments now fund their own Cleaner Production promotion programmes. The extent of concern over the impacts of industry and other economic activities on human health, and the sustainability of the environment and natural resources, is evident from the breadth of involved organizations. There is also a consensus, evident in the number of programmes specifically promoting Cleaner Production, that together with innovative and enforceable environmental standards and regulations, Cleaner Production is a key means to reduce pollution and conserve natural resources.Yet the result of all this activity remains disappointing, and Cleaner Production practices are not spreading as rapidly as hoped, especially among small and medium enterprises. It appears that in the developing economies pollution and resource consumption intensities per unit of production are not falling as rapidly as total production is rising. Continuation of this pattern will mean that the rapid economic growth anticipated for the next decade in Asia and other newly industrializing areas will bring increasing risk to human health and continuing environmental deterioration and depletion of natural resources, and may well threaten collapse of urban infrastructure in many of the large, already stressed urban centres in the developing world.
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