The Custom-House

Was China's Accession to the WTO Bad for Chinese Air Quality?

Probably not, find Haakon Vennemo, Kristin Aunan, Jianwu He, Tao Hu, Shantong Li and Kristin Rypd3al: Environmental impacts of China's WTO-accession (Center For International Climate and Environmental Research working paper, Oslo, 2005); Environmental impacts of China's WTO-accession (Ecological Economics, February 2008):

"Are ASEAN Countries Havens for Japanese Pollution-Intensive Industry?"

Do stricter environmental regulations in developed countries drive polluting industries abroad to poorer developing countries with less demanding regulations?  Are developing countries "pollution havens?"

Robert Elliott and Kenichi Shimamoto wonder: "Are ASEAN Countries Havens for Japanese Pollution-Intensive Industry?" (The World Economy, February 2008)  They don't find evidence that they are.

Here's the abstract:

Down to the Sea in Dirty Ships

The ships that carry 90% of world trade (by volume) are a major source of air pollution:

Ships release more sulfur dioxide, a sooty pollutant associated with acid rain, than all of the world's cars, trucks and buses combined, according to a March study by the International Council on Clean Transportation. That study also found that ships produced an estimated 27% of the world's smog-causing nitrogen-oxide emissions in 2005. Only six countries in the world emitted more greenhouse gases -- which trap heat in the atmosphere, warming the globe -- than was produced collectively in 2001 by all ships larger than 100 tons, according to the study and United Nations statistics....

At current rates of growth, oceangoing ships will generate 53% of the particulates, 46% of the nitrogen oxides and more than 94% of the sulfur oxides emitted by all forms of transportation in the U.S. by 2030, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates. That compares with levels for the same pollutants in 2001 of 17%, 12% and 49%, respectively, according to the EPA.

Bruce Stanley reports on the issue in tomorrow's Wall Street Journal: Danger at Sea.  Ships Draw Fire for Rising Role in Air Pollution (Nov 27).

Environmentalists Petition EPA to Reduce Air Pollution from Shipping

Oceana, the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, and EarthJustice have petitioned the EPA to regulate marine shipping so as to reduce emissions.  Here's the petition: Petition for Rulemaking Under the Clean Air Act to Reduce the Emission of Air Pollutants from Marine Shipping Vessels that Contribute to Global Climate Change (October 3, 2007). 

Here's the Oceana website on the petition: No More Free Ride: Global Warming Pollution from Ships Must be Regulated.  Oceana notes:

• This fleet releases between 600 and 900 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, an amount equivalent to emissions from at least 130 million cars -- about the number of cars operated in the United States.
• A single container ship emits more global warming pollution than 2,000 diesel trucks.
• By 2020, these emissions could double 2002 levels, and they could be triple those levels by 2030.
• Ships also are major releasers of nitrogen oxides – contributing nearly 30% of the world’s releases. This amount too is expected to triple by 2030.

Pollution from marine shipping

The November Bridges Trade BioRes reports on a new study documenting adverse health effects of marine shipping:

The Attack of the Giant Alien Carp

You try to do the right thing - clean up a polluted river - but that just creates an opportunity for an invasion by giant alien carp - only the Army, with an underwater electric fence, stands a chance of stopping them: An Underwater Fence to Stop Invasive Species (Kari Lydersen, Washington Post, July 16):

Michigan tries to stop invasive species

Douglas Belkin reported on a trade related issue this week - invasive species: What's Black and White and Has the Great Lakes Seeing Red?. Invaders Like Zebra Mussels Prompt Michigan to Require Clean Ballast; Shippers Sue  (Wall Street Journal, July 5). 

He focused on zebra mussels in the Great Lakes:

Does NAFTA protect investors at the expense of the environment?

NAFTA included provisions governing the treatment of foreign investments and providing protections for foreign investors (Chapter 11).   It was quite a surprise when several firms used these provisions, and NAFTA's arbitration procedures, to attack decisions ostensibly made to protect health and the environment.

Sanford Gaines of the University of Houston Law Center looks at what happened, and what it meant for environmental regulation in NAFTA's members, in this working paper: Environmental Policy Implications of Investor-State Arbitration under NAFTA Chapter 11 (last revised May 31, 2006). (hat tip to Bridges BioRes).

By January 2006, 43 notices of intent to file a complaint under Chapter 11 had been registered. Fourteen of these appear to involve environmental claims.  Four of these cases had not gone beyond the very early steps of arbitration (one of these four, Glamis Gold, is discussed at the end of this post).  In six additional cases, the environmental issues did not appear to be central to the investor's claim. Environmental issues were central to four cases, and arbitration had been completed. 

In general, he doesn't think that the Chapter 11 provisions had an adverse environmental impact in these four cases.  From the abstract:

On the North Pacific Great Circle Route

A week or so ago, The Economist had an article on recent shipwrecks and shipping accidents on the great circle route between the U.S. West Coast and East Asia (The North Pacific great circle route. A cold coming We had of it., Jan 18 - subscription required). 

The accompanying map showed that the shortest distance between East Asia and the Canadian-American Pacific Northwest runs through the Bering Sea:

Vessels traveling between East Asia and the North American West Coast actually pass both north and south of the Aleutians.  My understanding is that most vessels on the route north of the Aleutians pass from the North Pacific into the Bering Sea at Unimak Pass, to the east of Dutch Harbor, rather than to the west as shown.  The Coast Guard has begun monitoring traffic through the pass.  I think vessels are passing through it at the rate of about 3,100 vessels a year. 

The Economist article gives me an excuse to post some striking photos of the M/V Cougar Ace.

Are we exporting our polluting industries?

Have polluting industries from the U.S. migrated overseas to "pollution havens" in developing countries as trade barriers have fallen?

No say Josh Ederington, Arik Levinson, and Jenny Minier in an NBER working paper: Does the U.S. Outsource Polluting Industries?.    As reported by Matthew Davis in the most recent NBER Digest:

"Polluting industries' share of U.S. manufacturing output has declined in recent decades. That is good news for environmental quality in the United States. However, the fact that the decline has coincided with falling trade barriers has given rise to suspicions that the United States has outsourced its polluting industrial processes to developing countries. In Trade Liberalization and Pollution Havens (NBER Working Paper No. 10585), authors Josh Ederington, Arik Levinson, and Jenny Minier ultimately refute the notion that domestic manufacturing is cleaner today because trade agreements have allowed the United States to use "pollution havens" in the developing world to do its dirty work.

"We find no evidence that domestic production of pollution-intensive goods in the U.S. is being replaced by imports from overseas," they state. On one hand, Ederington, Levinson, and Minier understand how the "casual observer" could see a link between lower tariffs and a cleaner U.S. manufacturing sector. After all, while U.S. manufacturing was growing by 51 percent -- even as total emissions of many pollutants were growing at half that rate or actually dropping -- U.S. tariffs were falling dramatically. Between 1978 and 1994, tariffs on manufactured products were reduced 50 percent on average. But if trade liberalization were simply allowing dirty industries to relocate offshore, then the proportion of U.S. imports produced by pollution-intensive industries would rise as tariffs fell. Yet the opposite occurred.

Imports overall grew by 318 percent during the period. But according to World Bank data that characterizes industries by their pollution intensity, imports of goods manufactured in highly polluting processes grew at a much slower rate. In other words, just as the U.S. manufacturing sector was growing while simultaneously shifting toward clean industries, the same thing was happening to our imports: they were rising, but the percentage of goods coming from polluting industries was going down. "The cleaner U.S. manufacturing composition is not offset by dirtier imports," the authors write. "Rather, the composition of imports has also become cleaner."

Importantly, their conclusion holds firm even when they limit the analysis to trade with developing countries. Imports from developing countries grew by 344 percent, but imports of pollution-intensive goods from developing countries grew much more slowly.

Ederington, Levinson, and Minier believe that, if anything, lower tariffs might be actually slowing the U.S. shift to cleaner industries, because imports of goods made from pollution-intensive processes have not kept pace with the overall rise in imports. Thus, surprisingly, one potential environmental consequence of tariff reductions is that U.S. industries are dirtier than they otherwise would be..."