Manufacturing industries present society with a dilemma. A healthy manufacturing sector helps an economy to grow, thereby raising living standards — an especially important goal for developing countries. However, as factories try to meet ever-growing consumer demand, they deplete the world’s natural resources and pollute the environment. For some, the world now faces a stark choice between rising prosperity and a cleaner, more sustainable environment. In fact, with new technology and fresh thinking, policymakers can strike a durable balance between these competing interests.
In developed countries, consumers are increasingly recognizing that, while their material wellbeing may be higher than ever, their quality of life suffers if the environment is damaged. For poorer countries, such concerns are dismissed as a rich-world luxury. Industrial expansion is the best way to eradicate poverty and must surely trump environmental concerns.
No government, rich or poor, can ignore the imperative to encourage economic growth. The manufacturing sector creates jobs, makes affordable products for cash-strapped consumers, produces vital tax revenue that can be used to support social goals and brings in foreign currency in the form of export revenue. In short, a well-run manufacturing sector spreads wealth across society.
However, trying to satisfy the seemingly endless material demands of consumers at all levels of the economic pyramid has placed an unmanageable burden on the natural world. Resources are being consumed more quickly than the planet can replace them.
The manufacturing sector is particularly voracious, devouring more than half of all raw materials, about 30 percent of the world’s energy and 20 percent of its water. In the process, it produces too much waste for our fragile ecosystems to absorb.
Now, public opinion is starting to turn against what is increasingly perceived as plunder on a global scale.
Policymakers may not be able to compel citizens to ration their consumption. However, governments can encourage manufacturers to change how they operate, so that they use fewer resources and eliminate unnecessary waste.
Technological innovation and recyclable inputs can make a huge difference to the way the world produces and consumes. Like the dramatic changes once wrought by mass production, there is similar potential in the development and application of 3D printing, biotechnology, nanotechnology and other resource-efficient technologies.
Management thinkers, from C.K. Prahalad to Jaideep Prabhu, have shown how industry can be reconfigured to produce high-quality products cheaply and cleanly.
Indeed, these technologies and management ideas amount to something of a new industrial revolution — though one that will be very different from the Industrial Revolution that made Great Britain the dominant world power in the 19th century and helped it build a global empire.
The current transformation will be more democratic, spreading through global supply chains and modern communications to all countries that are integrated into the global economy. And it will be characterized by partnerships between government, the private sector and civil society.
Our challenge and our historic opportunity are to recognize this potential, and find ways for diverse groups to collaborate and realize it. A Green Industry Conference held recently in Guangzhou, China — following similar events in Manila in 2009 and Tokyo in 2011 — provides a template for this kind of broad cooperation. Delegates shared best practices, discussed ways to accelerate change in a range of sectors and sought innovative solutions to old management problems.
No one need be left out of this revolution. Even countries with abundant natural resources do not have to fear the shift to a greener world. By adopting new economic models, their large, but finite reserves will not be rendered useless; they will simply last longer. At the same time, countries facing shortages will gain greatly from being able to reduce their own resource needs.
Businesses, too, have been quick to adopt new practices. Many now routinely monitor and report on their environmental impact. Some are even starting to organize around new industrial concepts such as the “circular economy,” which focuses on reducing waste through multiple rounds of recycling.
This revolution may have been borne out of necessity; but, with ingenuity and cooperation, it will prove to be profitable, over the long run, for countries, manufacturers and consumers worldwide.
Li Yong is director-general of the UN Industrial Development Organization.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
On Monday, the day before Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) departed on her visit to China, the party released a promotional video titled “Only with peace can we ‘lie flat’” to highlight its desire to have peace across the Taiwan Strait. However, its use of the expression “lie flat” (tang ping, 躺平) drew sarcastic comments, with critics saying it sounded as if the party was “bowing down” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Amid the controversy over the opposition parties blocking proposed defense budgets, Cheng departed for China after receiving an invitation from the CCP, with a meeting with
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is leading a delegation to China through Sunday. She is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing tomorrow. That date coincides with the anniversary of the signing of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which marked a cornerstone of Taiwan-US relations. Staging their meeting on this date makes it clear that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intends to challenge the US and demonstrate its “authority” over Taiwan. Since the US severed official diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 1979, it has relied on the TRA as a legal basis for all
A delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials led by Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is to travel to China tomorrow for a six-day visit to Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing, which might end with a meeting between Cheng and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The trip was announced by Xinhua news agency on Monday last week, which cited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Director Song Tao (宋濤) as saying that Cheng has repeatedly expressed willingness to visit China, and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and Xi have extended an invitation. Although some people have been speculating about a potential Xi-Cheng
The ongoing Iran conflict is putting Taiwan’s energy fragility on full display — the island of 23 million people, home to the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturing, is highly dependent on imported oil and gas, especially that from the Middle East. In 2025, 69.6 percent of Taiwan’s crude oil and 38.7 percent of liquified natural gas were sourced from the Middle East. In the same year, 62 percent of crude oil and 34 percent of LNG to Taiwan went through the Strait of Hormuz. Taiwan’s state-run oil company CPC Corp’s benchmark crude oil price (70 percent Dubai, 30 percent Brent)
RSS