World Bank Technical Paper No. 381.Swelling urban populations and increased concentration of industry and automotive traffic in Asia?s cities has resulted in severe air pollution. The goal of the Urban Air Quality Management Strategy is to assist in designing and implementing policies and monitoring and managing tools to improve air quality in the major Asian metropolitan areas. This report focuses on the development of an air quality management system for Greater Mumbai (Bombay), India. Measures to reduce air pollution in this area focus on a traffic and action plan for air pollution abatement that takes into account the economic costs and benefits of abatement measures.
Air pollution has become part of the daily existence of many people who work, live and use the streets in Asian cities. Each day millions of city dwellers breathe air polluted with concentrations of chemicals, smoke and particles that dramatically exceed World Health Organization guideline values. Deteriorating air quality has resulted in significant impacts on human health and environment in Asia. This book provides a comprehensive and comparative assessment of the current status and challenges in urban air pollution management in 20 cities in the Asian region. It examines the effects on human health and the environment and future implications for planning, transport and energy sectors. National and local governments have begun to develop air quality management strategies to address the deterioration in urban air quality; however, the scope and effectiveness of such strategies vary widely. This book benchmarks these air quality management strategies, examines successes and failures in these cities and presents strategies for improving air quality management in cities across Asia and the rest of our rapidly urbanizing world. Information on air quality in Asia is clearly presented with easy-to-read city profiles, tables and graphs. This is an essential resource for all those concerned with urban air quality management, not just in Asia but in cities across our rapidly urbanizing world. Cities covered Bangkok, Beijing, Busan, Colombo, Dhaka, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kathmandu, Kolkata, Metro Manila, Mumbai, New Delhi, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Surabaya, Taipei and Tokyo
This book details the context within which policy decisions and objectives for the property tax system are made in the transitional economies of Central and Eastern Europe. It shows how these policy decisions evolve as a part of the transitional reforms still in process. This book offers the chance to review the experiences of transitional countries in initiating and implementing fiscal instruments during a decade of enormous transformations. The research for the case studies, included in this book, was sponsored by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
This contributed volume is primarily intended for graduate and professional audiences. The book provides a basic understanding of urban air quality issues, root causes for local and urban air pollution, monitoring and modelling techniques, assessment, and control options to manage air quality at local and urban scale. The book also offers useful information on indoor air quality and smart sensors, which are gaining much importance in current times.
The steady growth in the number of vehicles on the road, heavy reliance on coal, use of dirty fuels for residential combustion, and extensive open burning are some of the major factors leading to the progressive deterioration of air quality in developing countries in Asia. And despite efforts to establish and implement air quality measurement syste
October 1998 A policy considered in isolation may be ineffective because of the countervailing impact of other factors. And the success of a policy may itself lead to perverse incentives. Thus it is important to design complementary policies that support the original goal. Controlling air pollution from urban transport requires attention to land use planning, transport needs and modes, and air quality. Air quality is declining in urban areas, in part because of the rapid motorization of societies worldwide. To combat the problem, various pollution control strategies have been used or proposed for urban passenger transport. Heil and Pargal develop a simple framework to analyze these strategies. The virtue of this framework is its simplicity and its separation of factors. The authors examine the point of impact of different policy levers and categorize different instruments in a way that should help policymakers choose among them. The framework explicitly recognizes behavioral incentives, especially the fact that offsetting changes in consumer behavior can often undermine the original intent of particular policies. Among the findings: * Policies aimed at improving transport efficiency often improve air quality at the same time. * But supply-side policies to relieve traffic congestion sometimes conflict with supply-side measures to control air pollution. Improvements in roads and traffic, for example, may increase private motorized traffic conditions, making it difficult to assess the net effect of the improvements on air pollution. * There seems to be considerable scope for low-cost solutions to air quality problems associated with the transport sector. Inexpensive, low-technology solutions, such as establishing bus lanes or paving dirt roads, substantially improve both transport efficiency and air quality. * Behavioral change is difficult when viable transport alternatives are unavailable. A viable public transport system is essential to reduce transport-caused air pollution in densely populated areas. * Fuel and emission standards should become stricter over time. Standards should be gradually ratcheted up to give domestic auto industries the incentive to develop and adopt cleaner technology. This paper-a product of Infrastructure and Environment, Development Research Group-is part of a larger effort in the group to study the impact of motorization on air pollution. Sheoli Pargal may be contacted at [email protected].
World Bank Discussion Paper No. 326.Draws on the successful experiences of five East Asian economies--Japan, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Taiwan (China), and Hong Kong--to show how they have exploited the opportunities made possible by the information technology revolution and built sustainable competitive advantages in many high-value-added industries and services. The study examines the role of government in unleashing private-sector response, promoting the information technology industry, diffusing technology, and focusing resources on strategic elements of the national information infrastructure. It also explores the role of the private sector in influencing the development and use of the new technologies.
