To quantify differences in pollution levels among countries, Rogers has decided to use a "cost-of-repair" methodology to approach the problem.
According to a report written by Rogers, the methodology involves viewing environmental damage in terms of the money needed to remedy both "brown" pollution, which Because the standard of the index is measuredin dollars, government officials, policy makersand investors will be able to incorporate theindex values into their own economic frameworks. The index also allows one to use the same scaleto assess pollution levels for widely disparateindustries, including agriculture, forestry,mining and energy exploitation. The cost-of-repairmethodology has the added advantage of using datausually required by national and internationalagencies in carrying out their normal business. However, in his report Rogers notes that thecost-of-repair approach does have some drawbacks.For example, it is difficult to assign repaircosts to such intangibles as a loss of aestheticsor damage to habitat. Moreover, socialconsiderations such as equity and the role ofwomen would be very difficult to incorporate intothe model. Despite these disadvantages, the project teamhopes that the new index will do for theenvironment what the GNP does for politics andeconomics. Several subcontractors in the six Asiancountries, including their environmentalprotection agencies, will help compile the largeamount of data needed to formulate the index,Harrington says. The Asian Development Bank, one of the two mainsponsors of the project, will use the newenvironmental index in its annual allocation ofsome four billion dollars in loans, half of whichmust go toward investments which addressenvironmental, population and poverty concerns,says Nagaraja R. Harshadeep, a graduate student inenvironmental engineering. The other sponsor of the project is thegovernment of Norway, whose interest in theproject lies primarily in the idea of"sustainability," or the stable development ofindustrializing countries, Harrington says