Channel NewsAsia 19 Apr 08;
SINGAPORE: Asian countries need to take more global responsibility when it comes to sustainable development.
Professor Kishore Mahbubani, Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy made this point on Saturday at an event on sustainable development.
He added that more alternative ideas are needed as western countries become more “incompetent” in managing such global issues.
The increasing decline of the environment has been a pressing issue on the global front, especially so in the last few years.
But Professor Mahbubani said one can't just blame emerging countries like India and China.
He said: "Global warming today is also because of the stock of greenhouse gas emissions that were put up there by over the past century or more by the western industrialized powers."
He said a solution may be reached if western countries agree to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions as well.
Professor Mahbubani added: "The only way to solve the problem of greenhouse gas emissions is to put an economic price on the new greenhouse gas emissions that are coming. But to be fair, if you want to tax the new developing countries for their gas emissions, you also have to put an economic price on the stock that has been put up down there."
He also said Asian countries need to step up and take more responsibility and provide ideas and possible solutions rather than just rely on the West.
Two students from the NUS Business School presented such solutions and they won the Business Plan Challenge with their proposal to convert waste cooking oil into bio-diesel in India.
Neha Gupta, a student from the NUS Business School said: “We just have to remove the fatty acids from the waste cooking oil. It's a chemical process which converts this waste cooking oil into the bio-diesel."
More than 200 students across the Asia Pacific took part in the competition organised by the Indian Institutes of Management Alumni Associations. - CNA/vm
