Introduction: Developing-Country Firms as Agents of Environmental Sustainability?

Abstract

The second sector, which is typical of a Southern economy, is directed toward the domestic markets, and has a much thinner capital base, which results in the downwards business spiral of poor training and poor technology leading to poor profit margins….It comes as little surprise that this sector is also frequently the more polluting and resource inefficient (Wehrmeyer and Mulugetta 1999:5). Most evaluations of the potential of developing-country firms as agents of environmental sustainability are pessimistic. Developing-country firms are assumed to be environmental laggards, particularly in comparison to their industrialized country counterparts. They are assumed to be trapped in structures that dictate polluting practices as the only viable business model. And it is assumed that greatest potential for improving firm environmental practice in developing countries lies with the local subsidiaries of foreign multinationals and not with developing-country firms. These assumptions reflect empirical realities. Developing-country economies are polluting. However, they can also be misleading. The articles in this special issue of Studies in Comparative International Development offer competing characterizations of developing-country firms as potential agents in processes of sustainable development. Ranging across the globe from Ecuador to China, they each profile cases of developing-country firms embracing aspects of environmental protection, and even emerging as global leaders in the manufacturing and dissemination of clean technologies.