Yet even in the Netherlands the cleanliness might be a recent thing. I lived in NL some years ago and remember it as the dog-shit-on-the-pavement capital of Western Europe. Only after I left, people tell me, things got stricter.

> dog-shit-on-the-pavement capital

Oh gosh. The two eternal hazards of my childhood (that my parents would yell at me about) were dog shit and broken glass. I distinctly remember going to a school playground when I was about 6, and wanted to crawl through a plastic tunnel, but didn't when I saw a huge pile of shit in the middle.

Now, pooper scooper laws took care of the former, but people still get drunk off their ass and leave bottles everywhere.

I'm certain they'll get there in time, as part of the development process. Indonesia has grown its economy ten fold in 20 years, a mind-boggling rate of improvement. Just as with China, as they rise they'll have far greater resources available for many other considerations such as preservation of nature and general beautification (which is obviously often expensive, close to a luxury depending on what stage of development you're at). That switch from scarcity to plentifulness, rapidly changes a lot of things in a society usually.

> resources available for many other considerations such as preservation of nature and general beautification (which is obviously often expensive, close to a luxury depending on what stage of development you're at)

I am not sure this is true, isn't it that potential for damage to the enviroment (beyond only simple trash) increases with the economic power of the nation and therefore preservation would have to track economic progress?

I would think that preservation efforts would have track economic progress, but the effects lag in time and therefore gets noticed too late and costly renaturation efforts need to happen.