Throughout Asia, rapid economic and population growth has placed serious strains on the environment. strains have emerged in the form of urban overcrowding, deforestation, overfishing, air pollution, limted safe water supplies, and global warming. As this high-speed export-orientated economic development continues, Asian citizens find themselves not only questioning whether the price they pay is worth it, but feeling increasingly cheated and exploited by their governments and “investors”.

Some may view Asia as a continent that’s scrambling to catch up economically without regard for the environment, but this is not entirely the case. In fact, the environmental costs of this rapid industrialization are a major issue in Asia, and there is active discussion among many Asian countries, on finding alternatives to the current rapid-growth strategy. These concerns have been voiced by Asian citizens since as early as the 1970’s, and by the end of the decade, numerous NGO’s started forming, in order to provide people with a more effective means of voicing their socioeconomic grievances, and their apprehensions about their governments inability to address these issues.

Many of the environmental issues Asia faces today are also due to a legacy of colonialization. Sadly to this day, in many cases a semi-colonial structure remains, which gives the national elite and multinational corporations considerable control over natural resources. While some newer economic policies in Asia show an increasing openness to these issues, governmental efforts remain lacking, to say the least. At this point, the situation remains bleak. And if Asian governments continue ignoring the alarming signals, they will not only find themselves on the losing end environmentally, but in the long run, economically too.