Environmental Standards: Relocation of Production to the SAARC Region

Abstract

The linkages between environmental standards and international competitiveness have in recent years received widespread interest.1 It is commonly believed that where environmentally orientated product standards have an impact on competitiveness, this will normally be to the benefit of the importing country. The impact of environmentally orientated process standards, however, is less clear. Conventional wisdom indicates that the need to comply with more stringent domestic environmental process standards will adversely affect domestic industry vis-à-vis foreign competitors, because of the impact of compliance on the costs of production. It is feared that this is leading to the relocation of industries from countries with high environmental process standards to countries with lower ones.2 KeywordsEuropean UnionWorld TradeAbatement CostEnvironmental StandardPollution AbatementThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.