The Asian financial crisis is prompting "a shift - not a slow-down" in the activities of the United States-Asia Environmental Partnership (US-AEP), according to the organization’s chief, Peter Kimm. "While our sales and trade activities have clearly been impacted, initiatives in other components have moved to the forefront of US-AEP’s agenda," Kimm noted in a recent issue of US-AEP’s Update.

Noting that many Asian governments have been forced to abandon environmental infrastructure projects, Kimm said it made sense to renew the program’s focus on privatizing environmental infrastructure. As part of this strategy, the US-AEP hosted a two-day workshop on privatizing Thailand’s wastewater infrastructure in Bangkok. Held in late August, the Bangkok seminar was opened by Thailand’s Science, Technology and Environmental Minister, Yingphan Manasikarn.

ASER asked US-AEP representative Dennis Zvinakis about the difficulties of successfully introducing the user-pays strategies that must accompany privatization. "Certainly the financial crisis does make it difficult to introduce user-pay strategies, but the same crisis makes it even more difficult to sustain large government subsidies. I find it hard to see a third way. Growth in Asia and the amount of available capital may have declined, but urbanization and the demand for urban services continues relentlessly."