Conventional wisdom has it that concern for the environment is a luxury only the rich worl
But the environmental problems that developing countries should worry about are different from those that western pundits have fashionable arguments over. They are not about potential problems in the next century, but about indisputable harm being caused to conventional wisdom, solving such problems need not hurt economic growth; indeed dealing with them now will generally be cheaper than leaving them to cause further harm.
In most developing countries pollution seems to be getting worse, not better. Most big cities in Latin America, for example, are suffering rising levels of air pollution. Populations in these countries are growing so fast that improvements in water supply have failed to keep up with the number of extra people. Worldwide, about a billion people still have no access to clean water, and water contaminated by sewage is estimated to kill some 2 million children every year. Throughout Latin America, Asia, Africa, forests are disappearing, causing not just long-term concern about climate change but also immediate economic damage. Forest fires in Indonesia in 1997 produced a huge blanket of smog that enveloped much of South-East Asia and kept the tourists away. It could happen again, and probably will.
Recent research suggests that pollution in developing countries is far more than a minor irritation: it imposes a heavy economic cost. A Word Bank study put the cost of air and water pollution in China at $ 54 billion a year, equivalent to an astonishing 8% of the country's GDP. Another study estimated the health costs of air pollution in Jakarta and Bangkok in the early 1990s at around 10% of these cities' income. These are no more than educated guesses, but whichever way the sums are done, the cost is not negligible.
It is conventionally thought that ______.
A.only rich countries can afford to care about environmental problems
B.developing countries should also be thinking about the environment
C.environmental problems exist only in the rich world
D.rich countries have not paid enough attention to the health of the planet