Ramesh Ramaswamy and Suren Erkman WHY DEVELOPING COUNTRIES? A great
deal of manufacturing for the global market is increasingly moving
to developing countries, and many countries such as China and India
are experiencing rapid growth. Therefore, it is now a crucial time
to in?uence their choice of an industrial development path. While
it is an enormous opportunity to improve the living standards in
these countries through increased employment and business opportunities,
it is a serious load on the local resources (such as water, energy,
land, and so on), whose availability to the populations of these
countries is very poor. A development path that is based on resource
availability could create industrial growth that uses the resources
more e?ciently and judiciously, with minimal local and global impacts.
A less careful industrial development plan that uses up scarce resources
could spell danger to the very survival of over 80 per cent of the
planet's population that lives in the developing world. GROUND REALITIES
OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES It is important to understand some aspects
of life in the poor countries that are very much at variance to what
is seen in the developed world. Among the many speci?c aspects that
have to be borne in mind, is the fact that the pattern of resource
?ows in developing countries and hence the resultant environmental
threat could be very di?erent from what we see in the industrialized
West. Typically, the ?ows of materials through large, organized manufacturing
facilities in developing countries...