The traditional hope is that when people get the material goods they need--as in the West and Japan--they become more environmentally conscious, not just for the globe's sake but for their own. Air pollution in India causes 40,000 premature deaths annually, according to the World Bank, and a loss of 1.2 billion workdays due to sickness. Asia is especially vulnerable to global warming, says Lester Brown, president of Washington's Worldwatch Institute. "Much of the rice is produced on the flood plains very close to sea level," he notes. "Even a modest rise of sea level will endanger rice crops." Indonesia, composed of more than 17,000 islands, has particular reason to be alarmed. "If we believe all the studies about what will happen over the next hundred years," says Surna Djajadiningrat, an assistant minister in the Environment Ministry, "some of our islands will disappear."

Unfortunately, Asia's giant populations--China, India and Indonesia--have not yet attained the level of affluence that brings environmental enlightenment--what the Asian Development Bank calls "the turning point." Until they do, they are apparently content to let ecological destruction proceed at full throttle.

In some countries the legitimate desire for economic development is tainted by greed and corruption. Indonesia's forests are being chopped so fast that within a decade the nation may be importing wood, says Ben Fisher, a World Bank representative in Jakarta. President Suharto has been using reforestation funds--which come out of royalties paid by forest concessionaires--as a giant discretionary checkbook. In 1994 Suharto signed a decree transferring $183 million to a state factory developing airplanes. Last year an additional $102 million was signed away to a presidential friend for, of all things, a pulp-and-paper company.

Which demonstrates that a lack of political will is not the main problem; will is often strong but propelled in the wrong direction. There's no greater proof than China's $30 billion Three Gorges dam. In one way the project is environmentally salutary: huge amounts of electricity will be produced with no emissions of greenhouse gases. But the arguments against Three Gorges are as vast as the project itself. A huge area in Sichuan province will be flooded by a dam 1,983-m long and 185-m high, creating an estimated 620-km-long reservoir. Some 19 counties and municipalities, along with 25,900 hectares of farmland, will be submerged and 1.4 million people forced from their homes. But China says it needs the energy and sees the dam as a way to help fulfill its obligations as a signer of the global climate convention intended to curb greenhouse gases. Construction continues on Three Gorges, despite a pullout by the World Bank--which now advocates smaller dams--and a cooling of interest by the U.S. and Canadian governments. Beijing has allowed no public hearings on the project. Critics of the dam have been arrested.

If the steamroller and the buzz saw remain the main players in Asia's environmental struggle, one reason is the lack of steam in official efforts to promote green-friendly technologies. When India in the 1980s distributed hundreds of thousands of methane collectors and solar stoves, more than 2 million families had access to clean fuels. But villagers were never taught how to use the devices. Those who made an effort gave up when the appliances broke; no one knew how to repair them. Many village women are back to the forest scavenging for firewood--and the smoke they produce will continue to darken the future of Asia and the entire world.

--Reported by Meenakshi Ganguly and Maseeh Rahman/New Delhi, David Liebhold/Jakarta, Mia Turner/Beijing and Ravi Velloor/Singapore