Ouano, E: Cleaner Production: Myth and Reality

Cleaner production is considered the ideal solution to environmental problems as it reduces pollutants and at the same time improves product quality, reduce raw materials and energy inputs. While the objectives of cleaner production, that is a better product at the lowest inputs, have been always been the ultimate goals of inventors and investors throughout human history, long before the term cleaner production was coined, the intervention of the international political system in promoting cleaner production in developing countries has been unprecedented. The author examined the problems, constraints and implications of the political intervention in the development and applications of cleaner production to environmental management especially in developing countries. The scientific-political processes affecting the success and failures of cleaner production are the similar scientific-political processes affecting a wider range of environmental issues and the author could not help but touch on those issues. The more dogmatic the scientific-political discourse have become the further we are in finding real solutions to the real environmental problems.