By IPS Correspondents
NAIROBI, Nov 14 2003 (IPS)

The growing illegal trade in chlorofluorocarbons is undermining efforts to protect the ozone layer, campaigners have warned.

The ozone layer, which prevents harmful radiation from the sun reaching the earth, is located between the troposphere and the stratosphere, around 15 to 20 kilometres above the earth’s surface.

Scientists believe that the ozone layer is being damaged by the use of certain chemicals. This concern heightened after discovering holes in the ozone layer.

The harmful chemicals include chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS). Delegates to the ‘Fifteenth Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol’ in Nairobi on Nov. 10-14 heard how the illicit trade in the harmful chemicals was booming in developing countries and the United States. South Africa and Singapore have been singled out as notorious smugglers of the CFC compound. Dubai has been cited as one of the major transit points due to its free port characteristic.

“The role of transit countries in the global illegal trade in ODS is of particular concern. (These) countries facilitate ODS smuggling by confusing the trail of the material and providing a jump-off point into illegal markets,” senior campaigner, Ezra Clark said during the launch of a new report on Nov. 10.

Clark works for the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a Washington-based watchdog, which authored the report, ‘Lost in Transit, Global CFC Smuggling Trends and the Need for a Faster Phase-out’.

EIA sent a fact-finding mission to Singapore to establish how the CFC trading trickles down to other parts of the world.

“Our Singaporean investigations eventually led us to CFC smugglers in South Africa who use goldmines as a cover for a complex scam culminating in the scale of CFCs falsely claimed as ‘recovered’ on the lucrative U.S. market,” said Clark.

The illegal trade in CFCs is undermining the ‘Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer’, according to the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) Deputy Executive Director, Shafqat Kakakhel, who is based in Nairobi.

The protocol has managed to reduce global production and consumption of ozone depleting substances to about 90 percent since its adoption in 1987.

To phase out chemicals that are injurious to the ozone layer, the 162 countries that have ratified the protocol must stick to it. “Failure to comply would delay or could even prevent the recovery of the ozone layer,” warned Kakakhel.

EIA statistics shows that full recovery of the ozone layer is expected by 2050.

Some of the developing countries are intensifying efforts to protect the ozone and the environment. Kenya, for example, has enacted the National Environmental Act of 1999, which sets out a comprehensive mechanism for protection of the environment.

However, resources to phase out ODS including Methyl Bromide are insufficient, according to Kenya’s vice-president Moody Awori. “Effective phasing out will require adequate resources, enhanced national capacities, awareness creation and exchange of information if the developing countries are to achieve the 20 percent reduction in consumption of Methyl Bromide by 1st January 2005,” remarked Awori Thursday.

Kenya has been using Methyl Bromide in floriculture, but technologies of growing cut flowers without use of the chemical “have continued to be developed and are gradually being adopted by the growers,” said environment minister Newton Kulundu.

Kenya hopes to phase out harmful substances from its backyard by 2005.

Environmentalists in Kenya say shortage of funds has paralysed the fight against elimination of ozone depleting chemicals.

“Donors are not interested in funding CFC proposals anymore. They have now shifted to projects like the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and poverty reduction,” Grace Akumu, Executive Director of Climate Network Africa, a regional environmental organisation based in Nairobi, told IPS in an interview.

Akumu’s organisation dumped CFC programmes five years ago due to lack of donor funding. “If not adequately addressed, these chemicals are a time bomb waiting to explode,” she warned.

The World Health Organisation and UNEP have warned that, as ozone depletion increases and people become more exposed to the sun, ultraviolet (UV) radiation will become a more serious health risk.

Effects of radiation are more severe to the eye than ever imagined. In 1998, an estimated 135 million people in the world were visually impaired and 45 million fell blind, with cataracts as the major cause, according to the EIA report.

“Increased exposure to UV radiation due to depleted ozone is set to cause around 90 million additional cases of skin cancer by 2060 and 25 additional cases of cataracts by 2050, the report warned.

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