RIASSUNTO
Abstract
With the increasing awareness of environmental concerns associated with oil and gas exploration and production, and as the oil industry continues to grow in the regions of West Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and South America, it is imperative that our industry work together with local governments in protecting people and ecosystems. Too often, regulators in these areas find themselves without adequate resources to design effective environmental management programs and instead end up simply adopting and/or adapting regulatory programs developed by and for industrialized countries in North America, Europe, Australia, and/or South Africa.
Regulations in these developed parts of the world tend to vary greatly by country because they consider not only the technical basis for the regulation, but local and regional concerns such as the need to protect other industries/resources (e.g., fishing), land development plans, public opinion, cost/benefit analysis and many other factors. This paper will describe the technical, historical and political contexts that have driven a few key regulations in the industrialized countries of North America and Europe. These factors will then be used to evaluate the net environmental benefit of specific regulatory approaches in developing countries and to outline a framework for how governments, local people, non-government organizations, and corporations can work together to prioritize and deal with local environmental and human health issues.
Introduction
It is well recognized that there is not a one-size fits all answer to environmental issues around the world. The concept of a single global standard that is applicable to all conditions, and in all locations, is not compatible with the reality of the needs of society and industry.1 Principle 11 from the Rio Declaration of 1992 states in part, ""Environmental standards, management objectives and priorities should reflect the environmental and developmental context to which they apply. Standards applied by some countries may be inappropriate and of unwarranted economic and social cost to other countries, in particular developing countries.""2
It has been suggested that there can be a ""win-win"" option of accomplishing economic development and cost-effective solutions to protecting the environment, but also a concern that, ""if countries diminish economic wealth in the quest to rescue the environment, the result could be self-defeating.""1 Other researchers have suggested that ""economic competitiveness and environmental performance are compatible, if not mutually reinforcing.""3
How then can a win-win solution be developed? In this paper we will explore how regulations have been formulated to meet specific issues in North America and Europe. The lessons learned from these countries are relevant to developing an improved framework for formulating regulations in developing countries.
Drivers for New Regulations
Discussions at the 2002 Johannesburg Conference on Sustainable Development suggested that until a society reaches a certain degree of wealth and can take care of basic human needs, it is unlikely to allocate many resources to take care of the environment.1 An example of how poorer countries have difficulty responding to environmental pollution is illustrated by the poor air quality in some countries which have low gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (see Figure 1).3,4
Wealth may be more accurately considered as an enabler, rather than a driver for the development of environmental and health regulations. However, public pressure and concern often stimulated by both the print and broadcast media surrounding environmental disasters is clearly a driving force in the development of new regulations.
Until the mid-1950's, priorities in the United States (U.S.) were for protecting public health via sanitation and conservation of natural, pristine areas and ecosystems5 as illustrated in Figure 2. In the late 1960's, widely reported incidents in the news media raised public awareness of environmental damage. These incidents coupled with the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's book, Silent Spring,6 in large part galvanized the new environmentalist movement in the U.S.7