In several fields, new technologies offer particularly high potential for improving local and global environmental quality. Manufacturing, modeling, monitoring, and control Catalysis Separations Precision fabrication Materials design and processing Information, communications, and computing Contraception While many industrialized countries are developing and implementing some of these new technologies, progress in the developing world is lagging. Most developing countries have only weak demand for environmentally sound technology and also lack the necessary financial resources and technical capabilities. Yet, it is in the world's less-developed, rapidly industrializing nations that cleaner and less wasteful technologies are most urgently needed. Environmentally sound technology cannot possibly be transferred through national or international government action alone.
Individual governments can help by creating a positive climate for technology transfer.
I. Remove impediments to the transfer and adoption of environmentally superior technologies. Enhance environmental information disclosure. Public disclosure of information about sources, types, amounts, and consequences of pollution has significantly enhanced demand for environmental controls where it has been tried. Both private firms and governments in industrializing countries should make greater use of this strategy, institutionalizing it whenever possible. International business associations, in particular, have the power to create disclosure standards that could be quickly and widely adopted.