Environmental Impact and Mitigating Pollution Cost of Leather Export in Pakistan

The objective of this research was to estimate the increase in exports of and footwear, based on the Uruguay Round Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) and past trends, and identify the associated pollution and the benefits and costs of pollution mitigation. Leather is among one of the most polluting industries and, with in these industries, producing tanning leather are the most polluting processes. We selected the leather industries because of their economic significance and their pollution impact. Leather ranks fourth in terms exports and, while it is not as significant in terms of value added or employment, it is the most polluting of all the industries. We estimated the export related environmental impact of leather. Following that, we assessed the mitigation impact of using cleaner technologies in terms of reducing the scale of pollution and then assessed the cost of mitigation. The main finding of this research is that, at current emission rates, the pollution impacts of the exports of Leather and footwear are very large. However, the mitigation cost at the macro level of reducing the pollution load by up to 66 percent for leather tanning are much smaller than commonly considered to be the case in the South. For the leather industry, on a macro level the net mitigation cost (after subtracting the value of chromium recovery) in 2003-04 would have been 0.0048 percent of GNP and the mitigation cost to exporters of leather would have been 0.88 percent of their export revenue. In view of negative effects of pollution generated by these industries, as indicated in the preceding paragraphs, these mitigation costs seem modest indeed

The impact of South African automotive policy changes on the domestic leather industry

The South African leather industry has undergone a significant transformation since the 1990’s and this can be attributed primarily owing to two major factors that occurred. The first being trade liberalisation, which meant the fall of trade barriers, and the second being the Motor Industry Development Programme (MIDP), which was implemented in South Africa on 1 September 1995. The MIDP was implemented in the context of the country’s political and economic liberalisation, and the major structural shift in government policy and the trade regime. South Africa became much more globally integrated and the South African leather industry benefited because of this, as well as the incentives that was offered under the MIDP. Automotive exports of stitched leather seat parts responded positively to the incentives offered under the MIDP and stitched leather seat parts, as a component under the MIDP, became one of the best performing components being exported from South Africa. The MIDP had been terminated at the end of 2012 and is now being followed by government’s latest rendition of automotive policy, namely the Automotive Production and Development Programme (APDP). The APDP focuses on value addition, which pursues beneficiation of the country’s raw materials to the final stages, to ensure maximum benefit to the South African economy. The findings of the study entail that the South African leather industry is now in a vulnerable state because of the new automotive policy. This is mainly because the APDP does not provide the same level, or type, of incentives that the MIDP had provided to the industry.Business ManagementM. Com. (Business Management