Sustaining the Asia Pacific Miracle: Environmental Protection and Economic Integration

Asia Pacific countries have experienced extraordinary economic growth in recent years. But the region also suffers from choking air pollution, fouled water, ravaged forests, depleted fisheries, and other environmental problems.Eager to promote further growth, governments in the region have embarked on an ambitious program of economic integration through the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. In this volume, Dua and Esty argue that APEC's trade and investment liberalization can be compatible with environmental protection. They stress, moreover, that true prosperity and the APEC vision of a "community of Asia Pacific economies" cannot be achieved without attention to public health and ecological threats, resource management issues, and tensions at the economy-environment interface. The authors identify the issues that must be dealt with internationally and propose an ambitious environmental action agenda for APEC that would play an important role in that strategy.

André Dua provides strategic counsel to media and technology companies, state and local governments, and educational institutions. Among recent projects, André supported performance-transformation programs for a number of US state and local governments, helped a consumer-electronics company develop its go-to-market capabilities, worked on a market-entry strategy for an online-information-services provider, and advised a media company on postmerger management. He also helped create McKinsey Academy.

Daniel C. Esty was a senior fellow in 1994 and is an American environmental lawyer and policymaker. He is the Hillhouse professor at Yale University with appointments at the Yale Law School and the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.