Environmental Impact and Mitigating Pollution Cost of Leather Export in Pakistan

Imran Ghaffar

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Pollution; Environment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I0 L5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-09-10, Revised 2023-01-18
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