One of the voting centers of the popular consultation held on Sunday, Sept. 18 in Asunción Mita, a town of 50,000 people in eastern Guatemala. The majority of the people who voted said no to the Cerro Blanco mine, due to its environmental impacts. CREDIt: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
ASUNCIÓN MITA, Guatemala , Sep 21 2022 (IPS)

The majority of the Guatemalan population continues to oppose mining and other extractive projects, in the midst of a scenario of socio-environmental conflict that pits communities defending their natural resources against the interests of multinational corporations.

The most recent rejection of mining projects in this Central American country took place on Sunday Sept. 18 in the town of Asunción Mita, 350 kilometers southeast of the capital of Guatemala, in the department of Jutiapa.

The “No” vote wins

Here, through a citizen consultation, 88 percent of the more than 8,503 people who voted said “no” to the operations of the Cerro Blanco gold mine, owned by Elevar Resources, a subsidiary of Canada’s Bluestone Resources.

“In my view we can’t allow this to go ahead, we are getting older, but we don’t want the children and young people to suffer from the environmental impact of the mine,” said Petronila Hernández, 55, after voting at a school on the outskirts of Asunción Mita.

Hernández added to IPS that “we don’t agree with the mine, it affects our water sources, we carry the water from the water source, and the mine contaminates it.”

Hernández was accompanied by her daughter, Marilexis Ramos, 21.

“Hopefully our ‘No’ vote will win,” said Ramos during the voting. At the end of the afternoon the counting of votes began, and by Monday Sept. 19 the results began to be clear.

Mother and daughter live in the Cerro Liso hamlet, on the outskirts of Asunción Mita, very close to the mine.

Marilexis Ramos (r), 21, voted on the continuity of the Cerro Blanco mining project, located near Asunción Mita, 350 kilometers southeast of the Guatemalan capital, in the department of Jutiapa. A full 88 percent of the more than 8,503 people who voted said “no” to the gold and silver mine. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

The Cerro Blanco underground mine was licensed to operate in 2007 for a period of 25 years, but since then it has not been able to extract gold and silver, due to unforeseen issues.

The project encountered thermal water veins in the subsoil that released heat that made it impossible to work for long enough inside the two tunnels built in the mine, activist Juan Carlos Estrada, of the Water and Sanitation Network of Guatemala, told IPS.

“The mine has been stranded for almost 15 years without extracting a single ounce of ore,” Estrada said.

However, the community struggle continues because, despite the setback it suffered in Sunday’s vote, the company still intends to operate the mine and to do so it aims to modify the original plan and turn it into an open pit mine.

People vs. transnational corporations

Guatemala, a nation of 17.4 million inhabitants, has experienced socio-environmental conflicts in recent decades as a result of the communities’ defense of their territories against the advance of mining and hydroelectric projects and other extractivist activities.

Many of the conflicts have taken place in the territories of indigenous peoples, who make up 60 percent of the total population. Members of affected communities have put up resistance and have faced crackdowns by police and soldiers.

This has earned them persecution and criminalization by the authorities.

Dalia González, of the Salvadoran movement Green Rebellion, on the banks of the Ostúa River in eastern Guatemala, talks about the impact that pollution from the Cerro Blanco mine will have on the river, which in turn will end up polluting the Lempa River in El Salvador. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

In February, IPS reported on the struggle of indigenous Maya Q’eqchi’ communities in the municipality of El Estor, on the outskirts of Lake Izabal, in the department of the same name in eastern Guatemala.

The only active mine in Guatemala operates there, as similar projects have been blocked by the communities through citizen consultations or by court rulings, after the communities requested injunctions complaining about the lack of such votes, which are required.

The nickel mine in El Estor has been operated since 2011 by the transnational Solway Investment Group, headquartered in Switzerland, after purchasing it from Canada’s HudBay Minerals.

“Almost 100 consultations have been held, in 100 municipalities around the country, and in all of them mining and hydroelectric projects, mainly, have been rejected,” said José Cruz, of the environmental collective Madreselva.

The high number of consultations expresses the level of struggle of the population and the companies’ interest in the country’s natural resources.

“The only mining project currently operating is El Estor,” Cruz told IPS. And it is still active thanks to a “mock” consultation, manipulated by the company, which apparently endorsed the mine.

The Oxec I and Oxec II hydroelectric projects have also been a source of socio-environmental conflict.

The first plant began operations in 2015 and the second has been under construction since two years later. Both are owned by the Energy Resources Capital Corporation, registered in Panama.

In 2015, local Q’eqchi indigenous communities launched a struggle against the two hydroelectric power plants on the Cahabón River, located in the municipality of Santa María de Cahabón, in the department of Alta Verapaz in northern Guatemala.

After suffering persecution for his active participation in defense of his people’s territories, Q’eqchi leader Bernardo Caal was imprisoned in January 2018 and sentenced the following November to seven years in prison by a court “without any evidence,” as denounced at the time by Amnesty International, which considered him a prisoner of conscience.

However, he was released in March 2022 for good behavior and because there was essentially no evidence against him.

An anti-mining banner hangs on the façade of the church in Asunción Mita, in eastern Guatemala. The company operating the Cerro Blanco mine called the consultation process held in the town on Sept. 18 illegal. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Projects that pollute across borders

Although the victory of the “no” vote in Asunción Mita represents an achievement for local residents, the project still presents a pollution risk, not only for this town of 50,000 people, but also for neighboring El Salvador.

Asunción Mita is located near the border with El Salvador.

Environmental organizations in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have warned that heavy metal pollution from the mine would end up impacting the Ostúa River on the Guatemalan side.

The waters of that river, in turn, would reach Lake Guija, on the Salvadoran side. And a segment of that lake is reached by the Lempa River, which provides water to more than one million people in San Salvador and neighboring municipalities.

The Lempa River is 422 kilometers long and its basin covers three countries: It originates in Guatemala, crosses a small portion of Honduras and then zigzags through El Salvador until flowing into the Pacific Ocean.

El Salvador passed a law in March 2017 prohibiting mining, underground or open pit, but the proximity to the Cerro Blanco mine makes it vulnerable to pollution.

“We are concerned, our main source of water is under threat,” Salvadoran activist Dalia González, of the Green Rebellion movement, told IPS.

González added that the governments of Guatemala and El Salvador have an important role to play in protecting natural resources and the health of the local population.

“Because the effects of the mines cross borders,” said the young activist on the banks of the Ostúa River, where she had arrived along with Salvadoran environmentalists and journalists after witnessing the consultation process.

González called on Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to engage in a dialogue with his Guatemalan counterpart Alejandro Giammattei to find a solution to the problem of pollution that would also affect El Salvador.

“The situation is serious and requires urgent action,” said the Salvadoran activist.

After learning the results of the citizen consultation in Asunción Mita, the company behind the Cerro Blanco mine, Elevar Resources, called the process illegal, according to a press release made public on Monday Sept. 19.

The company’s managing director, Bob Gil, said, “this consultation process is clearly illegal and full of irregularities,” according to the statement.

In the company’s view, the process was flawed by what it called “anti-mining groups”.

“We are disappointed with the actions of these groups who use biased referendums to create doubt and uncertainty regarding responsible mining projects such as Cerro Blanco,” he added.

The consortium said the aim is to continue developing the project and to produce 2.6 million ounces of gold during the life of the mine.

Due to the problems it has had with the tunnels and the heat that prevents it from working and extracting the minerals, in November 2021 the company submitted a request to the authorities to transform the current underground mine into an open-pit mine.

The company “spoke of updating the Environmental Impact Study, but what was needed was a new study, because it was a completely different project,” said Madreselva’s Cruz.

Managing the life cycle of plastics, from production to end-of-life management is crucial to solving plastic pollution crisis. Credit: Antoine Giret/Unsplash

By Samira Sadeque
New York, Feb 8 2022 (IPS)

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected plastic waste management, as the world saw a rise in single-use sanitary products, and many cities abandoned their recycling and waste management efforts in the first few months, Eirik Lindebjerg of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) told IPS.

“For example, in March 2020, amid potential hygiene concerns, some major coffee chains paused filling reusable containers in favour of single-use receptacles,” he said. “We also saw many regulators around the world pausing or delaying bans, taxes, or fees on plastic items as well as recycling initiatives in response to sanitary and hygiene concerns.”

He added that some such measures included a pushback against the use of single-use plastic straws, stirrers, and cotton buds in the United Kingdom; meanwhile, the United States saw more than 100 cities halting curbside recycling programmes.

Lindebjerg, WWF’s Global Plastics Policy Manager, spoke with IPS as more than 70 business and financial institutions produced a statement demanding a legally binding treaty to address plastic pollution, ahead of February’s UNEA-5.2, which will be a continuation of UNEA-5.1, which took place in February 2021.

“We need to create proper systems for controlling and regulating plastic pollution, at local, national and global levels,” Lindebjerg said. “Governments need to cooperate and step up their game drastically.”

Excerpts of the interview:

Inter Press Service (IPS): A part of the statement reads: ‘This requires governments to align on regulatory measures that cover the whole life cycle of plastics, not limiting the scope of negotiations to address waste management challenges only.’ What would an approach that considers the ‘whole life cycle of plastics’ entail?

Eirik Lindebjerg (EL): A “whole life cycle of plastics” approach addresses all the potential risks of plastic pollution at each life cycle stage, from the extraction of raw materials to processing materials into plastic and its end-of-life management. Essentially, it is about introducing measures to stop plastic pollution at the stages where it is most efficient, instead of only focusing on high-cost infrastructure to clean up the problem afterwards.

A lifecycle approach would entail a mix of the measures, such as banning certain unnecessary and highly damaging product categories (like certain types of single-use plastics and intentionally added microplastics), product and design standards (to make sure a product produced in one country can be safely reused or recycled in another), as well as global requirements on waste management. Essentially, enabling better regulation of how we make, use and reuse plastic.

A new treaty should include all relevant measures necessary to solve the problem along the entire lifecycle and prioritise those most effective and least costly measures.

Categories of measure in the treaty could be:

• Harmonised regulatory standards and common definitions across markets;
• Clear national targets and action plans for tackling plastic pollution;
• Common reporting metrics and methodologies across the plastic value chain that can calculate discharge rates of plastics by country;
• Coordinated investment approaches toward infrastructure development in key markets and innovation.

IPS: How would a ‘circular economy for plastics’, as mentioned in the statement, add to the efforts to tackle climate change?

EL: Plastic is responsible for generating 1.8 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions a year across its lifecycle. That is more than the annual emissions from aviation and shipping combined. A circular economy for plastics would mean significant GHG emission reduction related to plastic pollution and virgin plastic production.

It would ultimately mean that all plastics used stays within the economy. It would mean zero virgin fossil fuel plastic production and zero leakage to the environment. It would most likely entail a reduction of plastics consumption, especially the unnecessary uses that are so common today. It would be built around reuse and recycling. New business models would create new job opportunities. Biodiversity would benefit both from eliminating pollution and reducing the footprint from production and consumption.

Such an approach can potentially reduce the costs and tackle the negative impacts of the plastics system. Research has shown that this approach could reduce the annual volume of plastic entering the oceans by 80 percent and GHG emissions from plastic by 25 percent, while promoting job creation and better working conditions. By one estimate, a circular economy approach could create 700,000 quality jobs across the plastic value chain by 2040. An increase in plastic material value through design for recycling can also lead to significant improvements in waste pickers’ working conditions and earnings.

IPS: Could you share in detail how to ‘keep plastics in the economy and out of the environment’?

EL: The Reduce-Reuse-Recycle hierarchy must guide policies, production, and consumption practices. We must stop producing and consuming unnecessary plastic products and packaging. Plastic products must be designed for being reused or recycled. And producers must be made accountable for the end of life of the products.

Today, most plastic products are being designed with the intention of becoming waste at the end of life. But when the right incentives are put in place, there are a lot of examples demonstrating that it is perfectly possible to have a more circular system, such as deposit return systems for PET bottles in many countries.

Several comprehensive interventions which can support the transition to a circular economy have already been identified. For example, the Pew Charitable Trusts has proposed nine systemic interventions in line with circular economy principles:

1. Reduce growth in plastic production and consumption;
2. Substitute plastic with paper and compostable materials;
3. Design products and packaging for recycling;
4. Expand waste collection rates in the middle- to low-income countries;
5. Double mechanical recycling capacity globally;
6. Develop plastic-to-plastic conversion;
7. Build facilities to dispose of the plastic that cannot be recycled economically;
8. Reduce plastic waste exports by 90%;
9. Roll out known solutions for four microplastic sources.

IPS: There is considerable evidence that climate change and environmental pollution disproportionately affect marginalised communities. How does it work for communities where plastic is just a cost-effective alternative for many objects?

EL: Unfortunately, this is true for plastic as well. Marginalised communities disproportionately bear the cost of plastic pollution: pen burning, open dumpsites, polluted drinking water, soil pollution, damages to marine ecosystems and fish stocks are all implications that disproportionately affect low income and marginalised communities.

Incineration plants and oil and gas refineries are built predominantly in low-income and marginalised communities exposing them to health and economic risks. In addition, incinerators and landfills are disproportionately situated in indigenous communities because their lands have unclear tenure status. Crude oil and gas refineries are also disproportionately built in low-income and marginalised communities. This exposes these communities to chemical pollutants released during the incineration and refining processes.

IPS: Of the countries that have not yet backed this new treaty, which ones are crucial in the global economy? How do you plan to get them to participate?

EL: China is the largest economic actor that has not yet formally expressed support for the treaty but has expressed an openness to engage in negotiations through a recent declaration from trade ministers at the World Trade Organisation and has engaged progressively on the issue at a global level regarding plastic waste trade. Therefore, it is likely that China will support a mandate decision at UNEA and play an essential role in the treaty negotiations.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Fayaz Ahmad Khanday plucks a lotus stem from Wullar Lake in India’s Kashmir. He says the fish population has fallen drastically in recent years. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

By Umar Shah
SRINAGAR, Feb 22 2017 (IPS)

Mudasir Ahmad says that two decades ago, his father made a prophecy that the lake would vanish after the fish in its waters started dying. Three years ago, he found dead fish floating on the surface, making him worried about its fate.

Like his father, Ahmad, 27, is a boatman on Kashmir’s famed Nigeen Lake, located north of Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar. He says the lake has provided a livelihood to his family for generations, but now things are taking an “ugly turn”.“The floods of September 2014 wreaked havoc and caused heavy loss to property and human lives. That was the first signal of how vulnerable have we become to natural disasters due to environmental degradation." --Researcher Aabid Ahmad

The gradual algae bloom in the lake, otherwise known for its pristine beauty, led to oxygen depletion. Fish began to die. Environmentalists termed the development the first visible signs of environmental stress in the lake.

But no one was more worried than Mudasir himself. “We have been rowing boats on the lake for centuries. My grandfather and my father have been fed by this lake. I also have grown up here and my livelihood is directly dependent on the lake,” Ahmad told IPS.

He believes the emergence of rust-coloured waters is the sign of the lake dying a silent death, and he holds everyone responsible. “We have built houses in an unprecedented way around its banks. The drainage from the households directly drifts into the lake, making it more polluted than ever,” Ahmad said.

Blessed with over 1,000 small and large water bodies, the landlocked Kashmir Valley, located northern India, is known as the land of lakes and mountains. However, due to large scale urbanization and unprecedented deforestation, most of the water bodies in the region have disappeared.

A recent study by Kashmir’s renowned environmentalists Gowher Naseem and  Humayun Rashid found that 50 percent of lakes and wetlands in the region’s capital have been lost to other land use/land cover categories. During the last century, deforestation led to excessive siltation and subsequent human activity brought about sustained land use changes in these assets of high ecological value.

The study concludes that the loss of water bodies in Kashmir can be attributed to heavy population pressures.

Research fellow at Kashmir University, Aijaz Hassan, says the Kashmir Valley was always prone to floods but several water bodies in the region used to save the local population from getting marooned.

“All the valley’s lakes and the vast associated swamps played an important role in maintaining the uniformity of flows in the rivers. In the past, during the peak summers, whenever the rivers would flow high, these lakes and swamps used to act as places for storage of excessive water and thereby prevented large areas of the valley from floods,” Hassan said.

Fishermen cover their heads and part of their boats with blankets and straw as they wait to catch fish Kashmir’s Dal Lake. Credit: Umer Asif/IPS

India’s largest freshwater lake, Wullar Lake, is located in North Kashmir’s Bandipora area. It too is witnessing severe degradation due to large-scale human intervention. Wullar Lake, which claimed an area of 217.8 sq. km in 1911, has been reduced to about 80 sq. km today, with only 24 sq. km of open water remaining.

Environmentalist Majid Farooq says large areas of the lake have been converted for rice cultivation and tree plantations. According to him, pollution from fertilizers and animal waste, hunting pressure on waterfowl and migratory birds, and weed infestation are other factors contributing to the loss of Wullar Lake’s natural beauty. The fish population in the lake has witnessed a sharp decline due to depletion of oxygen and ingress of pollutants.

Another famed lake known as Dal Lake has shrunk by 24.49 per cent in the past 155 years and its waters are becoming increasingly polluted.

The lake, according to research by the University of Kashmir’s Earth Science Department, is witnessing “multiple pressures” from unplanned urbanisation, high population growth and nutrient load from intensive agriculture and tourism.

Analysis of the demographic data indicated that the human population within the lake areas had shown “more than double the national growth rate.”

Shakil Ahmad Ramshoo, head of Department of Earth Sciences at University of Kashmir, told IPS that the water quality of the lake is deteriorating and no more than 20 percent of the lake’s water is potable.

“As the population increased, all the household sewage, storm runoff goes into the Dal Lake without any treatment — or even if there is treatment done, it is very insufficient. This has increased the pollutant load of the Dal Lake,” he said.

According to Ramshoo, when the study compared the past water quality of the lake with the present, it found ingress of the pollutants has increased and the lake water quality has deteriorated significantly.

According to the region’s tourism department, over one million tourists visit Dal Lake annually and around 300,000 people are directly and indirectly dependent on the lake for their livelihood. The multimillion-dollar handicrafts industry of Kashmir, which gives employment to over 200,000 people, is also heavily dependent upon the arrival of tourists in the region.

A study on the Impact of Tourism Industry on Economic Development of Jammu and Kashmir says that almost 50-60 percent of the total population of Jammu and Kashmir is directly or indirectly engaged in tourism related activities. The industry contributes 15 percent to the state’s GDP.

However, Mudasir Ahmad, whose livelihood is directly dependent on the lake, says every time he takes tourists to explore the lake in his Shikara (a boat), he is asked about the murkier water quality.

“My grandfather and even my father used to drink from this lake. The present situation is worrisome and if this goes unabated, tourists would cease to come. Who would spend money to see cesspools?” Ahmad said.

Fayaz Ahmad Khanday, a fisherman living on Wullar Lake, says the fish production has fallen drastically in the last three years, affecting both him and hundreds of other fishermen.

“Fish used to be present in abundance in the lake but now the scarcity of the species is taking toll. Every day we see dead fish floating on the lake’s waters. We really are concerned about our livelihood and the fate of the lake as well,” Khanday lamented.

The fisherman holds unplanned construction around the lake responsible for its pollution. Aabid Ahmad, a research scholar in Environmental Studies, says Kashmir has become vulnerable to natural disasters as region’s most of the water bodies have either disappeared or are shrinking.

“The floods of September 2014 wreaked havoc and caused heavy loss to property and human lives. That was the first signal of how vulnerable have we become to natural disasters due to environmental degradation,” Ahmad told IPS.

But, for Shakeel Ramshoo, it is still possible to restore the lakes and water bodies of Kashmir.

“Don’t move the people living on these water bodies out.  You just allow them to stay in the lake. We have to control the haphazard constructions that are taking toll around these water bodies,” he said.

“Hutments in the water bodies should be densified with STPs (Sewage Treatment Plants) installed in every household. Land mass can be removed and the area of the water bodies would increase. Also, the sewage treatment mechanism should be better so that the ingress of pollutants is ceased,” Ramshoo said.

A view of Gringo beach and, in the background, the city of Bajos de Haina, the Dominican Republic’s main industrial hub and port, and the third-most polluted city in the world. Credit: Dionny Matos/IPS

By Ivet González
BAJOS DE HAINA, Dominican Republic , Dec 15 2015 (IPS)

Rubbish covers the beaches and clutters the rivers, the garbage dump is not properly managed, and more than 100 factories spew toxic fumes into the air in the city of Bajos de Haina, a major industrial hub and port city in the Dominican Republic.

“We’ve only made it into the news as one of the world’s most polluted places,” lamented Adriana Vallejo, a schoolteacher who talked to IPS in the Centro Educativo Manuel Felix Peña, a school that teaches the arts in this city 80 km to the south of Santo Domingo.

Vallejo was referring to the list of the 10 most polluted places on earth drawn up periodically by the New York-based Blacksmith Institute (which has changed its name to Pure Earth).

The Institute’s latest report, from 2013, listed Bajos de Haina in third place, after Dzerzhinsk, Russia, and Chernobyl, Ukraine, which suffered one of the worst environmental disasters in history, caused by the catastrophic nuclear accident in 1986.

“Those up above are not paying attention to the environmental problem,” said Vallejo, referring to the ruling classes and the authorities. “We, from here down below, can do practically nothing.”

According to the “Map of Poverty in the Dominican Republic 2014”, 33 percent of households in this city of 159,000 people are poor.

“Private companies contribute a little to improving things, but only with small gestures, such as facilities at the school that were refurbished by the oil refinery (the only one in this Caribbean island nation). We haven’t seen a real desire for Haina to change,” said the teacher, who has lived here for 25 years.

“When the situation gets out of hand, we hold protest marches,” she said. “The people have had to take to the streets to fight serious problems like burning in the garbage dump, which enveloped Haina in a curtain of smoke.”

The manufacturing, chemical products, pharmaceutical, metallurgical and power plants and the oil refinery emit every a combined total of 9.8 tons of formaldehyde, 1.2 tons of lead, 416 tons of ammonium, and 18.5 tons of sulfuric acid annually.

The mouth of the Ñagá River, whose waters have darkened as a result of industrial waste and which has become more narrow due to the loss of the mangroves lining the banks, in the Dominican Republic coastal city of Bajos de Haina. Credit: Dionny Matos/IPS

The city’s thermoelectric complex produces more than 50 percent of the electricity available for the economy and the country’s 9.3 million inhabitants.

In this city, 84 hazardous substances have been identified, 65 of which are major toxics.

Factories dump waste into the rivers and the sea. And noise pollution is another problem affecting human health.

Scientific studies warn that a majority of local residents suffer from ailments such as asthma, bronchitis, the flu and acute diarrhea.

In this city of 50 square km, the main environmental woes are air, water and noise pollution, problems caused by the open-air dump, and municipal solid waste scattered everywhere.

Where tons of garbage now cover a wide open area, there was a forest 30 years ago, “where I used to wander as a kid,” said high school math teacher Juan Ventura, who took IPS to the dump. “People who used to live around here back then are nostalgic and sad; we miss what was once a natural area that used to be known as El Naranjal.”

“The city’s garbage is brought here, with absolutely no kind of health policies. For decades, they even brought in part of the garbage from Santo Domingo. The only thing they did was burn it, and the entire local population had to breathe the nauseating smoke.

“It’s pathetic that the local authorities have no serious policy for recycling, and some local residents scavenge waste materials on their own, without any protective measures,” he said, pointing to around a dozen men and women sorting through bags of garbage for scraps of material, plastic and metal, to classify and sell them to recycling companies.

One of the women, her hands filthy from scavenging, told IPS that she is involved in this informal activity because of the money she can earn.

The woman, who is originally from neighbouring Haiti, said she makes between 22 and 44 dollars a day collecting plastic that she resells – a considerable sum in a country where the minimum monthly wage is 231 dollars.

The authorities say Haina is suffering from the legacy of years of nearly non-existent environmental legislation.

The neighbourhood Paraíso de Dios or God’s Paradise turned into a living hell during the 20 years that the Metaloxa car battery recycling smelter operated there with no environmental controls or oversight. Local residents in the area where the plant used to operate have extremely high blood lead levels.

For a decade the community put up a battle until Metaloxa was forced to pull out in 1999, when the Public Health Ministry finally took action.

But many locals suffered irreversible damage to their health.

Residents of this city complain that enforcement of the 2000 law on the environment and natural resources is lax.

“There is no respect for the environment,” Mackenzie Andújar, a 41-year-old plumber who lives in the area of Gringo beach, told IPS. “There is no control over factories here; they dump their toxic waste out of chimneys and into the water. The situation in Haina has only gotten worse in recent years.”

The Ñagá River, which flows into the sea at Gringo beach, is filthy and narrow as a result of garbage dumps and deforestation. Plastic bottles, cardboard, old clothes and other trash is strewn over the sand dunes, while children splash in the water. The view from the beach is the furnaces and smokestacks of the nearby factories.

“The locals are uncultured; when a dog or other animal dies, they throw the corpse into the river or on the beach, instead of burying it,” said Andújar.

The environmental crisis, the high population density, the poor living conditions and the lack of services infrastructure make this a conflict-ridden area, according to the 2011 study titled “a socioeconomic and environmental diagnosis on the management of solid household waste in the municipality of Haina”

“The environmental problems in our community are hard to deal with, but we also have social contamination caused by crime and young people’s lack of interest in studying,” said music student Juan Elías Andújar.

“In school they talk to us about ecological issues,” he told IPS. “We have a group called ‘Guardians of Nature’, to raise social awareness and carry out actions like clean-ups of beaches. Haina could change if each person were willing to make an effort.”

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

By Tine Sundtoft and Christian Friis Bach
GENEVA, Dec 2 2015 (IPS)

Arctic temperatures have increased twice as much as the global average in the past 100 years. Recent photos show that thousands of walruses normally resting on sea ice between dives to find food have been forced to crowd ashore because of extreme sea ice melt in Alaska. Such photos have once again reminded us that it is high time we take serious action on climate change if we want to save the Arctic.

Tine Sundtoft is the Minister of Climate and Environment of Norway.

Christian Friis Bach is Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).

Calling Arctic countries our homes, we are both particularly concerned about Arctic ecosystems and their extreme vulnerability to climate change. As a result of diminishing sea ice and snow cover, entire habitats are being lost, threatening unique species, such as the iconic polar bears and walruses, as well as the traditional livelihoods of indigenous peoples.

Not only CO2 and other greenhouse gases, but also some air pollutants have impacts on climate change in the Arctic, such as black carbon, a component of particulate matter which is produced by the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels or wood. Also known as a short-lived climate pollutant, black carbon has a particular relevance in the Arctic, as it absorbs sunlight and thus increases melting when it is deposited on ice and snow.

A changing climate, however, does not affect the Arctic only; it is felt all around the world. When the reflectivity of the Arctic surface is reduced, resulting in further warming and melting of ice, it has an escalating effect on sea levels and temperature increase also on a global scale.

We are the last generation with the ability to stop climate change and save the Arctic. If we fail, it will be a historic mistake. But we have to act fast. This is why, in the run-up to COP 21, the Climate Change Summit in Paris, we have been drawing attention to the benefits of addressing climate change and air pollution in a more integrated way.

While poor air quality and climate change are different phenomena, they are closely linked. Burning of fossil fuels is the major source common to both air pollutants and greenhouse gases. Thus, many actions taken to reduce emissions from these sources will help improve air quality and address climate change at the same time.

Climate change and air pollution are posing an increasing risk to our collective security, prosperity and well-being. WHO reports that in 2012 around 7 million people died across the globe as a result of air pollution exposure, confirming that air pollution is now the world’s single largest environmental health risk.

While the effects of air pollution are mostly being observed at the local level, a large volume of air pollutants are transported across borders and even continents. This is particularly true in the Arctic, where around 50 % of the emissions of black carbon are coming from Europe. Hence, joining efforts internationally to reduce emissions is critical to save the Arctic.

A number of actions are already being taken. Through the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution, which sets emission targets for a number of key air pollutants, UNECE also contributes to climate change mitigation. This pioneering treaty, signed to solve the problem of acid rain in Northern Europe in the 1970s, now has 51 Parties, including all the countries of the Arctic. Thanks to the collective efforts of these countries, emissions of key air pollutants have been reduced by 40 to 70 per cent since 1990 in Europe and by up to 40 per cent in North America.

In 2012, Parties broke new ground in amending the Gothenburg Protocol, which is now the first legally binding agreement containing obligations to reduce short-lived climate pollutants, notably fine particulate matter (PM2.5), including black carbon emissions. The Gothenburg Protocol is thus an example of how air and climate pollutants can be tackled in a more integrated way.

The Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum that addresses issues faced by the eight Arctic countries and the indigenous peoples that live there, has taken a leading role in providing updates on the rapid climate changes in the Arctic and its consequences for our societies and the environment, locally and globally.

We call on all countries to step up their efforts and make sure that COP 21 will deliver a strong agreement. We also call on Governments to ratify and implement the Gothenburg Protocol and consider further initiatives to tackle air pollution and climate change in a more integrated way. Let us act now to both tackle climate change and save the Arctic!

(End)

Excerpt:

By Hazel Henderson
ST. AUGUSTINE, Florida, Dec 2 2015 (IPS)

Civil society organizations, known as NGOs, have for decades used their non-government status to prod officials, politicians and business on climate issues. Veteran campaigners Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Oxfam, Kenya’s tree planters, India’s Chipko tree-hugging protectors and indigenous movements worldwide first raised the issues of protecting the Earth and its atmosphere.

Hazel Henderson

Social change rarely comes from elites since those in power are insulated from the hunger, desperation, pollution and resource depletion their populations experience. Change comes from societies’ periphery, those marginalized, excluded, voiceless in policy discussions of governments and business.

Thus civic and voluntary associations, movements and protests become the vanguards of social change – often positive, but negative if ignored or suppressed. These ancient forces in human societies are rooted in our earliest experiences of dangers and risks and our responses to our fears: competing with other groups for territory, accumulating and hoarding resources – or more positive responses of bonding, sharing and cooperating as Charles Darwin saw as our evolutionary success.

Elites in Britain hijacked Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection and saw it as the “survival of the fittest” recast in The Economist by Herbert Spencer. The magazine apologized for its focus on competition and “this poisonous phrase” in December 2005 as I described in Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy (2006).

The NGOs leading the climate debate for decades include the Carbon Disclosure Project, now CDP, Rocky Mountain Institute, Natural Capital Solutions, Carbon Tracker and the Club of Rome of concientized and superannuated elites. Drivers are social and environmental justice groups, worldwide indigenous networks of ecovillages, local currencies, monetary reformers, ethical investors and, more recently, religious groups led by Pope Francis, followed by many others, including the movement Our Voices.

The official climate debates in the UN summits focused around the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, unfortunately captured by the economics profession into ineffective carbon markets and trading of pollution permits, offsets too easily gamed by financial players. While many reaped money rewards, these “markets” failed to reduce or even slow carbon dioxide and other GHG emissions.

The UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen in 2009 saw officials naming, blaming and shaming between Tier I countries which had achieved development on fossil fuels and their emissions and Tier II countries still seeking their own development. The stalemate was largely influenced by this Kyoto Protocol. The major possibility for agreement was left on the table: accelerating the global transition of all countries to low-carbon, renewable resource economies – beyond the fossil-fuel era to the next Solar Age.

Fast forward to Paris and COP 21, the NGOs are still leading the way with their many approaches to this transition to 100 percent renewable resource economies and the equally necessary inclusion of all in the coming green prosperity. They drove the agenda at Rio +20 in 2012 with Brazilian groups, the Rainforest Alliance, the Committee on Sustainability Assessment, World Resources Institute, Biomimicry Institute, the International Institute for Sustainable Development and many others.

The historic deadly duo: resource depletion and inequality are at last being addressed as the single issue for human survival and evolution. This deadly duo is central in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) ratified by the 193 member countries at the UN in New York, September 2015. This new inclusive development model supersedes the obsolete economic model measured by gross domestic product (GDP), its subsidies to fossil fuels and all pollution and social harm it treats as “externalities” omitted from business and government accounts. Even mainstream Wall Streeters are critiquing inequality in corporations. Hedge fund philanthropist Paul Tudor Jones, founder of JUSTCapital, is launching a JUST 100 Index of the fairest corporations. While 66 per cent of corporations now accept climate science, 95 per cent of them still belong to trade associations obstructing progress, according to InfluenceMap. At last, these past subsidies which caused global warming are being phased out.

Solar, wind, wave power, geothermal and energy efficiency are revealed as cheaper than unsubsidized fossil fuels and nuclear power. Full-spectrum accounting by SASB and IIRC drives the new NGOs promoting all these Solar Age technologies. Our Green Transition Scoreboard launched in 2009 now tracks private investment in green sectors worldwide at $6.22 trillion.

Helio International’s HIFI tool for investors will help steer them to those countries most hospitable to Solar Age investments, mostly in developing countries.

These societies are not trapped in obsolete infrastructure and can “leapfrog” directly to green technologies: beyond vulnerable national electric grids to decentralized local power from community-owned local solar and wind generation. Asset owners, pension funds are driving shifts of investments and portfolios to fossil-free, green sectors, including CERES, 2° Investing, Grantham Foundation, Climate Bonds Initiative, Sonen Capital, Green Alpha Advisors and others.

NGOs can continue driving the debates at COP21 with their new allies and accelerate the great global transition now underway to the next economy, equality-based and powered by the daily free photons from our Sun.

(End)

Excerpt:

(IPS Asia-Pacific) – Although it is six years old, few know what the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) does. It has been called toothless, though its creation was seen as a step forward given the principle of non-interference in the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

AICHR chair Dr Muhammad Shafee Abdullah

Q: Who are the individuals, groups, organisations or member countries that have approached AICHR to say they needed help for human right violations?

Dr Abdullah: There has been a sizeable number of persons and groups who came forward. But sadly, we are not authorised to receive their complaints and process them so they can go to the next level.

Q: So how did you address the complaints, given your situation?

Dr Abdullah: We asked them to go back to their countries or whoever can help them such as individual lawyers, legal institutions, human rights organisations and advocacy groups. We gave them directions on how to do that, doing all we can to help them find some answers and, we hoped, some form of restitution. But we cannot even interfere. That’s why we feel very inadequate. We are not independent enough. We need to look at our group and see how we can be a better body.

Q: How did these complainants approach you and what were their complaints?

Dr Abdullah: Many of them came to us with papers and documents, but there were more of them who contacted us through emails. Their complaints on human rights violations are very diverse – land rights violations due to seizure and incursion by more powerful people such as politicians and big business. There were those who raised their right to health and a healthy environment because of pollution caused by industries, oil and mine spills, poisoning and others. There were complaints about employment and labour practices, aggression and abuse inflicted by members of their own communities and other parties. But the majority of grievances involve violations of the fundamental rights to freedoms of speech, association and expression.

Q: In the ASEAN Responsible Business Forum (Oct. 27-29, 2015, Kuala Lumpur), you mentioned that you were surprised that ASEAN member states agreed on the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (in 2012). What made you say that?

Dr Abdullah: Yes, I was pleasantly surprised because the 10 countries had their strong suspicions against each other for some reasons. But with this wariness, they still managed to agree that there should be an accord to guide them in human rights issues. But surprised as I was, I tried to understand this decision-making in the context of harmony even in differences in norms and beliefs.

Q: The current issue of the transboundary haze was high in the forum, and you were vocal about the responsibility of companies and industries operating in the region.

Dr Abdullah: Yes, I would say Indonesia should not be blamed for it, or any other country in the region for that matter. It doesn’t even matter which country is responsible, but all the countries should go after the companies causing the haze. They must file complaints against them and make them pay for it. I know countries need to maintain a level of diplomacy on matters like this, and the corporate sector is doing its own PR exercise, but I think each country must enforce its own laws to prevent this thing from happening again. The haze is a health and environmental issue that goes into the centre of human rights. It is a total breach of human rights. And I think the corporate sector should take this issue seriously. Thailand and Singapore have strong securities (guarantees), some sort of entry point for companies wanting to do business to comply with human rights stipulations. This should be a great start.

Q: You also praised Myanmar for initiating efforts to protect the environment.

Dr Abdullah: Myanmar co-organised a workshop on the implementation of human rights obligations relating to the environment and climate change to follow up from a similar workshop in 2014. The workshop enabled member states to understand deeper the human rights obligations relating to the environment in the ASEAN context. I would say it helped the countries look at ways of doing a regional response and charting country obligations involving the business and corporate sectors and other stakeholders, especially in environmental policy-making and protection. There were legal frameworks and environmental impact assessment tools for ASEAN.

Q: What are your next steps?

Dr Abdullah: The AICHR will ascertain that environmental issues that impact on human rights, such as the haze, will be included in discussions in the ASEAN Summit. On complaints that we continue to receive, we will make sure that they are received by the countries in question at the national level, and through specific channels. We will continue to promote human rights. We want to make sure they are in the consciousness of people in the region.

*This is part of the ‘Reporting ASEAN: 2015 and Beyond’ series of IPS Asia-Pacific and Probe Media Foundation Inc. http:www.aseannews.net

Fish farming has fast turned into a way for many Africans to beat poverty and hunger. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Aug 5 2015 (IPS)

Hillary Thompson, aged 62, throws some grains of left-over rice from his last meal, mixed with some beer dregs from his sorghum brew, into a swimming pool that he has converted into a fish pond.

“For over a decade, fish farming has become a hobby that has earned me a fortune,” Thompson, who lives in Milton Park, a low density area in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, told IPS. In fact, he has been able to acquire a number of properties which he now rents out.

Thompson is just one of many here who have struck gold through fish farming.

African strides in fish farming are gaining momentum at a time the United Nations is urging nations the world over to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns as part of its proposed new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which will replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) when they expire this year.In many African towns and cities, thriving fish farmers have converted their swimming pools and backyards into small-scale fish farming ponds, triggering their proverbial rise from rags to riches

The SDGs are a universal set of 17 goals, targets and indicators that U.N. member states are expected to use as development benchmarks in framing their agendas and political policies over the next 15 years.

Faced with nutritional deficits, a number of Africans have turned to fish farming even in towns and cities to complement their diets.

In Zimbabwe, an estimated 22,000 people are involved in fish farming, according to statistics from the country’s Ministry of Agriculture.

Behind the success of many of these fish farmers stands the Aquaculture Zimbabwe Trust, which was established in 2008 to mobilise resources for the sustainable development of environmentally-friendly fisheries in Zimbabwe as a strategy to counter chronic poverty and improve people’s livelihoods.

Over the years, it has been on the ground offering training aimed at building capacity to support the development of fish farming.

The figure for fish farmers is even higher in Malawi, where some 30,000 people are active in fish farming-related activities, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Fisheries are reported to contribute about 70 percent to the protein intake of the developing country’s estimated 14 million people, most of whom are too poor to afford meat.

For many Malawians like Lewis Banda from Blantyre, the country’s second largest city, fish farming has become the way to go. “Fish breeding is a less demanding economic venture, which anyone willing can undertake to do, and fish sell faster because they are cheaper,” he told IPS.

In many African towns and cities, thriving fish farmers have converted their swimming pools and backyards into small-scale fish farming ponds, and many like Banda have seen fish farming trigger their proverbial rise from rags to riches.

“I was destitute when I came to Blantyre eight years ago, but now thanks to fish farming, I have become a proud owner of home rights in the city,” Banda said.

Globally, FAO estimates the value of fish trade to be 51 billion dollars per annum, with over 36 million people employed directly through fishing and aquaculture, while as many as 200 million people derive direct and indirect income from fish.

FAO also reports that, across Africa, fishing provides direct incomes for about 10 million people – half of whom are women – and contributes to the food supply of 200 million more people.

In Uganda, for example, lake fishing yield catches are worth more than 200 million dollars a year, contributing 2.2 percent to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), while fish farming employs approximately 135,000 fishers and 700,000 more in fish processing and trading.

The rising fish farming trend comes at a time when the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) has been on record as calling for initiatives such as fish farming to be replicated in order for Africa to harness the full potential of its fisheries in order to strengthen national economies, combat poverty and improve people’s food security and nutrition.

Last year in South Africa, Alan Fleming, the director of The Business Place, an entrepreneur development and assistance organisation based in Cape Town, came up with the idea of using shipping containers as fish ponds, an idea that was well received by the country’s poor communities.

“My children are now all in school thanks to the noble idea hatched by Fleming of having a fish farm designed within the confines of a shipping container, which is indeed an affordable idea for many low-income earners like me,” Mpho Ntabiseni from Philippi, a low-income township in Cape Town, told IPS.

Citing a growing shortage of traditionally harvested fish, the South African government invested 100 million rands (7.8 million dollars) last year in aquaculture projects in all four of the country’s coastal provinces.

In 2014, some 71,000 South Africans were involved in fish farming, according to figures from South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs.

Nutrition experts say that fish farming has added nutritional value to many poor people’s diets. “Fish farming helps poor African communities to add high-value protein to their diet since Africa often suffer challenges of malnutrition,” Agness Mwansa, an independent nutritionist based in Lusaka, the Zambian capital, told IPS.

Adding an environmental concern to the benefits of fish farming, Julius Sadi of the Aquaculture Zimbabwe Trust, told IPS that “fish from aquaculture ponds are preferred by consumers because they are bred in water that is exposed to very little or no pollution, which means that there is high demand and therefore high income for fish farmers.”

As a result, donor agencies such as the U.K. Department for International Development (DfID) have helped to give Africa’s aquaculture industry a kick-start over the last decade.

According to FAO studies, about 9.2 million square kilometres (31 percent of the land area) of sub-Saharan Africa is suitable for smallholder fish farming, while 24 countries in the region are battling with food crises, twice as many as in 1990.

The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015 report released jointly by FAO and the World Food Programme (WFP) says that the East and Central Africa regions are most affected, with more than 30 percent of the people in the two regions classified as undernourished.

With fish farming gaining popularity, it could be the only means for many African to beat poverty and hunger. “Fish breeding has emancipated many of us from poverty,” said Banda.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Flooding in Nigerian villages is just one of the effects of climate change that the country will have to address in drawing up its “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs) for the U.N. Climate Conference in Paris in December: Credit: Courtesy of NDWPD, 2011

By Ini Ekott
LAGOS, Aug 2 2015 (IPS)

Nigeria seems in no haste to unveil its climate pledge with just four months to go before the U.N. Climate Conference scheduled for December in Paris.

However, unlike Gabon, Morocco, Ethiopia and Kenya – the only African nations yet to submit their commitments – Nigeria has just commissioned a committee of experts to draw up targets and responses for its “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs).

INDCS are the post-2020 climate actions that countries say they will take under a new international agreement to be reached at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris, and to be submitted to the United Nations by September."The whole exercise [of preparing INDCs] will consider some priority sectors, look at the baseline and look at our needs for development and see what we can put on the table that we are going to strive to mitigate in terms of greenhouse gases” – Samuel Adejuwon, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Environment

Ahead of that date, Nigeria says its goals are clear: balancing post-2020 greenhouse gas (GHG) emission cut projections with its development peculiarities, according to Samuel Adejuwon, deputy director of the Federal Ministry of Environment’s Department of Climate Change in Abuja.

Nigeria is Africa’s fourth largest emitter of CO2, and there is no doubt climate change is already a problem it faces.

From the north, encroachment of the Sahara is helping to fuel a bloody insurgency by the jihadist group Boko Haram, as well as resource conflict between farmers and pastoralists in its central region, while the rise in ocean levels and flooding are affecting the south.

In a report issued in October 2014, the Mapelcroft global analytics company said that Nigeria, along with Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India and the Philippines, were the countries facing the greatest risk of climate change-fuelled conflict today.

Nigeria’s hopes for slashing its emission levels as part of its INDCs face several tests.

One is that for an economy almost solely dependent on oil – which accounts for a major portion of its 500 billion dollar gross domestic product (GDP), Africa’s highest – the commitment it takes to Paris will reflect how jettisoning fossil fuel cannot be an urgent priority and why doing so will require significant time and resources.

“The whole exercise will consider some priority sectors, look at the baseline and look at our needs for development and see what we can put on the table that we are going to strive to mitigate in terms of greenhouse gases,” says Adejuwon.

Another test is Nigeria’s energy shortage. The country produces about 4,000 megawatts for 170 million people, leaving much of the population reliant on wood, charcoal and waste to fulfil household energy needs such as cooking, heating and lighting.

In 2014, Nigerians used at least 12 million litres of diesel and petrol every day to drive back-up generators, according to former power Minister Chinedu Nebo. The country’s daily petrol consumption (cars included) stands at about 40 million litres, according to the state oil company, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.

Cutting the level of pollution that this consumption causes will require big investments in renewable and cleaner energy, says Professor Olukayode Oladipo, a climate change expert and one of three consultants drawing up the INDCs for the government.

Last year, former finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said the country needed 14 billion dollars each year in energy investments and related infrastructure.

Oladipo argues that the key to the issue lies in striking a balance between a future of lower greenhouse emissions and immediate developmental realities.

“Every country is now exploring how to use less energy … in an efficient manner, how to rely on renewable energy sources.” In Nigeria, we are looking at “how to be able to drive our economy through reduced energy consumption without actually reducing the rate at which our economy is growing.”

Last year, minister of power Chinedu Nebo said that while solar panels were welcome for use in shoring up generation in distant communities, the government will deploy coal in addition to the hydro power currently in use.

“There is no doubt that the potential is there. Clean coal technology can give us good electricity and minimum pollution at the same time,” he said.

Insecurity

Oladipo also stresses that besides fuel, Nigeria’s climate plans will focus on agriculture, partly to diversify from oil and also as a response to growing resource conflict.

“We are not saying it is the only determinant of crisis,” he says of climate change stoking conflict over resources, “but at least it is adding to the degree and the frequency of the occurrence of these conflicts.

Apart from Boko Haram activities in the north which have been responsible for at least 20,000 deaths, clashes between pastoralists and farmers over land has killed thousands in Nigeria’s central region in recent years.

In the latest attack in May this year, herdsmen from the Fulani tribe slaughtered at least 96 people in the central state of Benue, Nigeria’s Punch newspaper reported.

The government agrees that climate change is one of the causes of the frequent bloodletting, alongside factors like urbanisation, but not much has been done to address the problem.

Oladipo says he believes that Nigeria’s new leader, Muhammadu Buhari, will do more to address fundamental climate change issues, point out that in his inaugural address on May 29, Buhari pledged to be a more “forceful and constructive player in the global fight against climate change.”

However, Nnimmo Bassey of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation argues that proposals put forward by Nigeria and Africa can barely be achieved if the developed nations – the biggest polluters – fail to act more to meet their commitments and cut down on their emissions.

“Nigeria should insist that industrialised nations cut emissions at source and not place the burden on vulnerable nations,” says Bassey.

Urging action from those nations, including the United States, will form a key element of Nigerian and African INDCs, adds Oladipo.

Edited by Phil Harris    

Coal mining in India. Coal-fired plants contribute 60 percent of India’s energy capacity and are a large source of the air pollution that is taking a toll on people’s health and their livelihoods. Photo credit: The Hindu

By Chaitanya Kumar
NEW DELHI, Mar 19 2015 (IPS)

In November last year, India’s power minister Piyush Goyal announced that he plans to double coal production in India by the end of this decade and, in an effort to enhance production, the Indian government has started a process of auctioning coal blocks.

Coupled with the auctions is the disinvestment of Coal India Limited (CIL), the world’s largest coal mining company, and both actions can provide short-term reprieve to India’s energy and fiscal deficit woes.

However, there are four reasons why investors and the government should be wary of investing in coal for the long run (10-15 years).

The first stems from the fact that it is rapidly becoming clear to big business and governments around the world that a large proportion of coal and other fossil fuels should be left in the ground. The second is that coal consumption is declining in many parts of the world, with economics increasingly in favour of alternate sources of energy, such as wind and solar.“A systematic effort is now under way to dilute environmental, land and forest laws … The latest land ordinance passed by the [Indian] government has done away with two key pillars of the process of land acquisition: social impact assessment and community consent”

Reasons three and four have to do with growing resistance from tribal and grassroots communities, and the fact that India will be forced to take some form of action as air pollution becomes increasingly dangerous.

Despite its plans for coal production, the Indian government has been giving the right indicators on its pursuit of renewable energy, but this ambition – though welcome – is being counterbalanced by the country’s continued lust for more coal.

Call it an addiction that is hard to let go or sustained pressure from big corporations and their existing investments in coal, the Indian government has turned its eye on the vast domestic reserves in the country.

Growing resistance from tribal and grassroots communities

A systematic effort is now under way to dilute environmental, land and forest laws in the country. The latest land ordinance passed by the government has done away with two key pillars of the process of land acquisition: social impact assessment and community consent. The ordinance is facing stiff resistance from opposition parties and the general masses of India.

Any project, either private or under a public private partnership (PPP), previously required the consent of 80 percent of the community that the project impacted but no such consent is now required.

Social impact assessments that factors in effects on the environment and human health, among others, were mandatory for projects and while such assessments were shoddy in the past, doing away with them completely sets a poor precedent for industrial practices and gives even less of a reason for companies to clean up their acts.

A lack of social impact assessment also adds to the ambiguity that exists in offering the right compensation as part of the rehabilitation and resettlement plan embedded in the land ordinance.

In the context of coal, the efforts of the government to re-allocate 204 coal blocks and begin mining will be met by stiff resistance from impacted communities. “There is a fear that we will witness greater state violence on people as they begin resisting projects that have immediate impacts on their lives and livelihoods”, says Sreedhar, a former geologist who now runs a network of activists called Mines, Minerals & People.

The Mahan coal block, forcefully pursued by the Essar company, is a case in point where local communities have been resisting open cast mining for several years. The mine is located in what is one of the last remaining tracts of dense forests in central India. Mahan has subsequently been withdrawn from the auctions, a victory celebrated by the local communities.

Foreign investors are especially wary of pumping money into projects that can see resistance from local communities. The high profile cases bauxite mining plans by British resources giant Vedanta in ‘sacred’ hills in eastern India and the plans of South Korea’s POSCO steel-making multinational to open a plant in the eastern state of Odisha have become strong deterrents for big money to enter India.

While the government’s efforts at allaying fears may work, there is a difference in rhetoric and on-the-ground reality because it will not be easy to simply wish away people’s concerns.

Visible resistance has taken shape in the state of Chhattisgarh where twenty tribal gram sabhas in the Hasdeo Arand coal field area of the state passed a formal resolution under the forest rights act against coal mining in their traditional forest land.

“There has to be an assessment of India’s energy needs alongside an evaluation of the forests that we stand to lose from coal mining. Allocation of coal blocks in dense forests is imprudent,” says Alok Shukla, an activist from Chhattisgarh who is mobilising tribal communities to uphold their forest rights.

These struggles might only intensify as government efforts are aggressively under way to further dilute tribal rights and open up inviolate forests for coal mining.

Air pollution is becoming hazardous and India will be forced to act

As the pressure to act on air pollution builds, India will have to enforce strict emission norms on coal plants and their operators. Installing flue-gas desulphurisation scrubbers should be mandatory on any new plant that is set to operate in coming years. These devices are very effective in limiting dangerous pollutants from escaping into the atmosphere but come at a heavy cost for investors and coal power generators. 

But why would the government work towards increasing operational costs for power plants in the pipeline? Here’s why – air pollution is killing Indians every year and is now the fifth largest contributor of deaths in the country. The fact that 13 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in India is a cause for great alarm. A study has indicated that one in three children have shown a reduction in lung function in Delhi.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) report, which makes this claim, advises that fine particles of less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter (PM2.5) should not exceed 10 micrograms per cubic metre. Delhi tops the list at 153 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic metre and it is only getting worse.

In Delhi, for instance, coal roughly contributes 30 percent of recorded air pollution (particulate matter) and the numbers are higher in the coal clusters of the country. Coal-fired plants contribute 60 percent of India’s energy capacity and are a large source of the air pollution that is taking a toll on people’s health and their livelihoods.

A recent report on coal pollution in India by Urban Emissions and Conservation Action Trust reveals a shocking statistic – in another 15 years between 186,500 and 229,500 people may die premature deaths annually as a result of a spike in air pollution caused by coal-fired power plants.

In dealing with air pollution, curbing the effects of harmful pollutants like nitrous and sulphur oxides from coal power plants is critical and there is growing pressure on the central government to introduce strict emission standards. India is the only major coal-powered nation that does not have any concentration standards for these pollutants, a requirement that should soon be in place.

Both domestic and international pressure can move India to clean up its air. The government cannot afford to have an ‘airpocalypse’ on its hands.

All is not well with the coal industry in India  

Undaunted, Narendra Taneja, energy cell convenor of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, has claimed that coal and gas will remain the mainstay of the country’s economy for the next 50-60 years.

The impossibility of this claim becomes apparent when we look at the actual reserves of extractable coal. Only one-fifth of the coal reserves of CIL are extractable and if the ambitious doubling of domestic production happens, the known reserves are expected to last for less than two decades.

Coal mines that expire before the lifetime of new coal plants scream for greater economic prudence from investors.

India’s ambitious renewable energy expansion plans need to be complemented by a phase-out plan of coal. The world needs stronger political leadership from India as it tries to tackle the twin challenges of poverty and climate change.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

Africa’s wetland areas are experiencing immense pressure from commercial development and agriculture, settlements, excessive exploitation by local communities and improperly-planned development activities. Credit: Creative Commons CC0

By Tonderayi Mukeredzi
HARARE, Mar 12 2015 (IPS)

African wetlands are among the most biologically diverse ecosystems on the continent, covering more than 131 million hectares, according to the Senegalese-based Wetlands International Africa (WIA).

Yet, despite their importance and value, wetland areas are experiencing immense pressure across the continent. Commercial development ranks as the major threat for the draining of wetlands, including for tourism facilities and agriculture, where hundreds of thousands of hectares of wetlands have been drained.

Other threats to Africa’s wetlands are commercial agriculture, settlements, excessive exploitation by local communities and improperly-planned development activities. The prospect of immense profits from recently discovered oil, coal and gas deposits has also led to an increase in on-and offshore exploration and mining in sensitive ecological areas.Commercial development ranks as the major threat for the draining of [Africa’s] wetlands, including for tourism facilities and agriculture … Other threats are commercial agriculture, settlements, excessive exploitation by local communities and improperly-planned development activities

In Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique, for example, wetlands and estuaries coincide with fossil fuel deposits and related infrastructure developments.

In northern Kenya, port developments in Lamu are set to take place in the West Indian Ocean Rim’s most important mangrove area and fisheries breeding ground.

In KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape of South Africa, heavy mineral sands are located in important dune forest ecosystems, and gas is being prospected for in the water-scarce and ecologically unique Karoo.

In East Africa, oil discoveries have been made in the tropical Congo Basin rain forest and the Virunga National Park – a world heritage site and a wetland recognised under the Ramsar Convention.

The Okavango Delta in Botswana, one of Africa’s most important wetlands and designated as the 1,000th world heritage site by UNESCO, has been home to many threatened species and the main water source of regional wildlife in Southern Africa. Yet it is shrinking due to drier climate, increased grazing and growing pressure from tourism.

“This delta is a true oasis in the middle of the bone-dry Kalahari Sand Basin, a rare untouched wilderness that’s been preserved by decades of border and civil wars in the Angolan catchment,” said National Geographic explorer Steve Boyes in an interview. “Many people along the Okavango River live like communities did some 400 years ago – and from them I think we can learn a lot about how to be better stewards of the natural world.”

Boyes calculated the abundance of life in the delta: more than 530 bird species, thousands of plant species, 160 different mammals, 155 reptiles, scores of frogs and countless insects.

“Everywhere you look you find life. We surveyed bats and we found 17 species in three days. We started looking for praying mantises and found 90 different species,” he said.

A recent survey by the Botswana Department of Wildlife and National Parks and the environmentalist group BirdLife Botswana concluded that that the wetland’s historical zones of dense reed beds and water fig islands were largely destroyed by hydrological changes and fire. Bush fires and a high grazing pressure further reduced the natural shores of the Okavango Delta.

Studies by BirdLife Botswana also showed that the slaty egret, a vulnerable water bird living only in Southern Africa, with its main breeding grounds in the wetlands of Zambia, Mozambique and Botswana’s Okavango Delta, is now estimated to have a total population of only about 4,000 birds.

The egret, which is listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as vulnerable, seems to be losing its main breeding sites in the Okavango.

Environmentalists hope that they can still save the wetland, and pin their hopes on a “Slaty Egret Action Plan” which will be used by the Botswana’s Department of Wildlife and National Parks, BirdLife and other environment stakeholders to guarantee the survival of the Okavango Delta as a safe haven for the birds.

In a further step to save the wetlands, the Botswana government announced this month that from now on, seekers of mobile safari licences would be prohibited from operating in the Okavango Delta because the area in now congested.

The Botswana Guides Association, which represents many of the mobile safaris, is threatening to appeal.

Another example of the devastation of major wetlands occurred in Nigeria with pollution of farmlands linked to the Shell oil company.  The Niger Delta Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration Project, an independent team of scientists from Nigeria, the United Kingdom and the United States, has characterised the Niger Delta as “one of the world’s most severely petroleum-impacted ecosystems.”

In 2013, a Dutch court found the Nigerian subsidiary of Shell culpable for the pollution of farmlands at Ikot Ada Udo in Akwa Ibom state in the coastal south of the country.

The Niger Delta is Africa’s largest delta, covering some 7,000 square kilometres – one-third of which is made up of wetlands. It contains the largest mangrove forest in the world.

Assisted by environmental organisation Friends of the Earth, the court ruling was a victory for the communities in the Niger Delta after years of struggle against the oil company dating back 40 years, although the clean-up still has far to go.

“Destruction of wetlands is prevalent in almost all countries in Africa because the driving factor is the same – population pressure – many mouths to feed, ignorance about the role wetlands in playing in the ecosystem, lack of policies, laws and institutional framework to protect wetlands and in cases where these exist, they are hardly enforced,” John Owino, Programme Officer for Water and Wetlands with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)  told IPS from his base in Nairobi, Kenya.

Owino said that the future of African wetlands lies in stronger political will to protect them, based on sound wetland policies and encouragement for community participation in their management, which is lacking in many African countries.

But very few African governments have specific national policies on wetlands and are influenced by policies from different sectors such as agriculture, national resources and energy.

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris   

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Dec 15 2014 (IPS)

It is now official: the current inter-governmental system is not able to act in the interest of humankind.

The U.N. Climate Change Conference in Lima – which ended on Dec. 14, two days after it was scheduled to close – was the last step before the next Climate Change Conference in Paris in December 2015, where a global agreement must be found.

Roberto Savio

In Lima, 196 countries with several thousand delegates negotiated for two weeks to find a common position on which to convene in Paris in one year’s time. Lima was preceded by an historical meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping, in which the world’s two main polluters agreed on a course of action to reduce pollution.

Well, Lima has produced a draft climate pact, adopted by everybody, simply because it carries no obligation. It is a kind of global gentlemen’s agreement, where it is supposed that the world is inhabited only by gentlemen, including the energy corporations.

This is an act of colossal irresponsibility where, for the sake of an agreement, not one solution has been found. The “big idea” is to leave to every country the task of deciding its own cuts in pollution according to its own criteria.“Lima has produced a draft climate pact, adopted by everybody, simply because it carries no obligation. It is a kind of global gentlemen’s agreement, where it is supposed that the world is inhabited only by gentlemen”

And everybody is aware that this is most certainly a disaster for the planet. “It is a breakthrough, because it gives meaning to the idea that every country will make cuts,” said Yvo de Boer, the Dutch diplomat who is the former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). ”But the great hopes for the process are also gone.”

To make things clear, all delegates knew that without some binding treaty to reduce emissions, there is no way that this will happen. But they accepted what it is possible, even if it does not solve the problem. It is like a hospital where the key surgeon announces that the good news is that the patient will remain paralysed.

The agreement is based on the idea that every country will publicly commit itself to adopting its own plan for reducing emissions, based on criteria established by national governments on the basis of their domestic politics – not on what scientists have been indicating as absolutely necessary.

This, of course, is the kind of treat that no country in the world objects to. The real value of the treaty is not the issue. The issue is that the inter-governmental system is able to declare unity and common engagement. The interests of humankind are not part of the equation. Humankind is supposed to be parcelled among 196 countries, and so is the planet.

This act of irresponsibility is clear when you look at all the countries producing energy, like Saudi Arabia or Venezuela, Iran or Ecuador, Nigeria or Qatar, whose governments are interested in using oil exports to keep themselves in the saddle. And take a look at what the world’s third largest polluter, India, is doing in the spirit of the Lima treaty.

Under the motto: “We like clean India, but give us jobs”, the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is moving with remarkable speed to eliminate any regulatory burden for industry, mining, power projects, the armed forces, and so on.

According to the high-level committee assigned to rewrite India’s environmental law system, the country’s regulatory system ”served only the purpose of a venal administration”. So, what did it suggest? It presented a new paradigm: ”the concept of utmost good faith”, under which business owners themselves will monitor the pollution generated by their projects, and they will monitor their own compliance!

The newly-appointed Indian National Board for Wildlife which is responsible for protected area cleared 140 pending projects in just two days; small coal mines have a one-time permission to expand without any hearing; and there is no longer any need for the approval of tribal villages for forest projects.

Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar boasted: ”We have decided to decentralise decision making. Ninety percent of the files won’t come to me anymore”. And he said that he was not phasing out important environmental protections, just “those which, in the name of caring for nature, were stopping progress.” He also plans to devolve power to state regulators, which environmental expert say is akin to relinquishing any national integrated policy.

It is, of course, totally coincidental that Lima conference took place in the middle of the greatest decrease in oil prices in five years. The price of a barrel of oil is now hovering around the 60 dollar mark, down from over 100 two years ago. This price level has basically been decided by Saudi Arabia, which did not agree to cut production to increase the cost of a barrel.

The most espoused explanation was that the low cost would undercut schist gas exploitation which is making the United States energy self-sufficient again, and soon an exporter. But this will equally undercut renewable energies, like wind or solar power, which have higher costs and will be abandoned when cheap oil is available.

Again coincidentally, this is creating very serious problems for countries like Russia and Venezuela (U.S. irritants) and Iran (a direct enemy), which are now entering into serious deficit and serious political problems. And, again coincidentally, this is making use of fossil energy more tempting at a moment in which the world was finally accepting that there is a problem of climate change.

In March, countries will have to present their national plans and it will then become clear that governments are lacking on the very simple task of arresting climate change, and this will lead us to irreversible damage by our climate’s final deadline, which was identified as 2020.

Thus the exercise of irresponsibility in Lima will also become an exercise in futility.

Is there any doubt that if the people, and not governments, were responsible for saving the planet, their answer would have been swifter and more efficient?

Young people, all over the world, have very different priorities from corporations and industry … but they also have much less political clout.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Excerpt:

African countries fought hard for the Kyoto Protocol not to die on African soil at the 2011 Climate Change Conference in South Africa, but they say it is now languishing in limbo because developed countries are taking what they called “baby steps” towards ratification of the Doha Amendment that gave it a new lease of life.

The African Group and other least developed country negotiators at the ongoing (Dec. 1-12) U.N. Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru, say they are concerned about the slow progress towards giving a legal force to the international emission reduction treaty.

Nagmeldin El Hassa, Chair of the Africa Group in Lima – “In our view, the developed countries are reneging, abandoning and weakening the Kyoto Protocol”. Credit: Wambi Michael/IPS

“We would like to point out that slow ratification of Commitment Period Two of Kyoto by developed countries does not build confidence. In our view, the developed countries are reneging, abandoning and weakening the Kyoto Protocol,” Nagmeldin El Hassan, Chair of the African Group said at the opening of the conference.

He said failure by developed countries to ratify the Doha Amendment was forcing the least developed countries to assume legal commitments while relaxing the legal commitments of the historical greenhouse emitters. “If this is the game that some think we are ready to entertain, we must make it clear that we will not be party to this game,” El Hassan added.

In December 2012, the Doha Amendment to the Protocol was agreed, extending it into a new commitment period running from 1 January 2013 to 31 December 2020. The European Union (EU), its 28 Member States and other developed countries have ratified the protocol.

The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, to which the Kyoto Protocol is linked, requires ratification by 144 countries before it can enter into force.“The responses of rich developed countries show no sense of urgency – they have presented less climate finance than last year, have not raised their pollution targets and have not even legally ratified the Kyoto Protocol as they promised two years ago” – Mithika Mwenda, Secretary-General of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA)

By the end of November 2014, only 20 countries had ratified the Doha Amendment establishing the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. Guyana was the latest to ratify as it prepared to join the negotiations in Lima.

El Hassan told IPS that the ratification process needs to be accelerated and clear accounting rules adopted in Lima so that the amendment enters into force by the next Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015.

African environment groups and NGOs are also calling on governments to hasten progress on ratification of the much fought for second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol.

Mithika Mwenda, Secretary-General of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) to which more than 30 Africa-based NGOs belong, told IPS that it was demoralised by the “baby step” speed of the developed countries towards ratification.

“Africans have sent their governments to Lima with urgent and creative demands to face the climate crisis,” said Mwenda. “Yet the responses of rich developed countries show no sense of urgency – they have presented less climate finance than last year, have not raised their pollution targets and have not even legally ratified the Kyoto Protocol as they promised two years ago.”

According to Mwenda, the developed countries are determined to delay their participation in the Kyoto Protocol’s second commitment period.  “They are letting their national interests trump over the global common good and are opting out of multilateral rules.”

Earlier in the week, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres said that both developed and developing country Parties to the Kyoto Protocol needed to save the protocol from languishing in limbo by ratifying it.

“I have said this before and let me say it again. For this international legal framework to enter into force, governments need to complete their ratification process as soon as possible. We need a positive political signal of the ambition of nations to step up crucial climate action,” said Figueres.

The African Group is pushing for ratification of the Doha Amendment because it extends a legal commitment to Annex 1 countries – members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) plus a group of countries whose economies are in transition – to contribute towards a global effort to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

Ram Prasad Lamsal from Nepal, who chairs the LDC Group, told IPS that “ratification is essential for the Kyoto Protocol to continue to serving as a cornerstone of the multilaterally agreed rules-based system under the [Climate Change] Convention and a full reflection of its principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities.”

However, while the African countries are pushing their developed country counterparts to ratify the Doha Amendment, just four of them had ratified it by the end of November – South Africa, Sudan, Morocco and Kenya.

A delegate from European Union speaking on condition of anonymity wondered why the African countries – as well as the LDC Group, the G77 and China – were not ratifying the second commitment period as they mount pressure on developed countries.

Paul Isabirye, Uganda’s UNFCCC Focal Point, told IPS that African countries would easily ratify once the developed countries had taken the lead.

“But even if all the African countries ratified, it still cannot enter into force before our colleagues do it. They have the bulk of the emissions to cut. The issue is not that Africa has lagged behind, the big emitters don’t seem to be coming forward,” said Isabirye.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Stop Elektrownia Północ campaigners trying to stop investment in Europe’s biggest new coal power plant. Credit: C. Kowalski/350.org

By Diana Maciaga
WARSAW, Oct 27 2014 (IPS)

Pomerania in northern Poland is famous for its unpolluted environment, fertile soils and historic heritage. So far, these valuable farmlands have been free from heavy industry but that situation might change as a shadow looms over the lives of Pomeranians.

Its name is Elektrownia Północ, also known as the North Power Plant and, ever since we learned about it, we have been determined to stop Elektrownia Pólnoc.

If built, this coal-fired power plant would contribute to the climate crisis with 3.7 million tons of coal burnt annually, and lock Poland into coal dependency for decades.

It threatens to pollute the Vistula River, Poland’s largest river, with a rich ecosystem that is home to many rare and endangered species.“The [Polish] government’s energy scenario, ironically labelled as sustainable, is based on coal and nuclear power. It promotes business as usual and hinders any development of renewable energy”

The threat of soil degradation and inevitable drainage keeps local farmers awake at night, not to mention the air pollution from the plant that will be a major health hazard, making the situation in Poland – already the most polluted country in Europe with more people dying from air pollution than from car accidents – even worse.

But this is not just about stopping one of a dozen fossil fuel projects currently under development. This is part of a much broader struggle.

While unemployment soars, the Polish government fails to stimulate green jobs and dismisses renewable energy as too expensive. At the same time, it is pumping billions into the coal industry. Unprofitable and un-modern, it thrives thanks to hidden subsidies that in the past 22 years added up to a mammoth sum equal to the country’s annual GDP.

The government’s energy scenario, ironically labelled as sustainable, is based on coal and nuclear power. It promotes business as usual and hinders any development of renewable energy.

The current government continues to block European Union climate policy, without which we can forget about a meaningful climate treaty being achieved in Paris next year.

All this takes place while we face the greatest environmental crisis in history and leaves us hopelessly unprepared for everything it brings about.

But Poland’s infamous coal dependence is all but given and the policy that granted our country the infamous nickname “Coal-land” is strikingly incompatible with the will of the Polish people. All around the country people are fighting coal plants, new mines and opposing fracking. We want Poland to be a modern country that embraces climate justice.

I went to New York to be part of the People’s Climate March, observe the U.N. Climate Summit and bring this very message from hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens whose voices had been ignored on domestic grounds to the international stage. Yet what I had not expected was how powerful an experience it would be.

With 400,000 people in the streets and thousands more all over the world, New York witnessed not only the largest climate march in history on Sep. 21 but a true change of tide: a beautiful, unstoppable wave of half a million representing hundreds of millions more – the stories unfolding, forming an epic tale not of loss or despair but of resilience, strength, responsibility and readiness to do what it takes to save this world.

For decades world leaders have been failing us, justifying their inaction with the supposed lack of people’s support, their talks poisoned by a ‘you move first’ approach.

The voices of those who marched echoing in the street and in the media, impossible to be ignored, left their mark on the Summit and resounded in many speeches given by world leaders. The march showed it more clearly than ever how strong the mandate for taking action is and, even more importantly, where the leadership truly lies.

Opening the Summit, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed to politicians to take action to ensure a low-carbon, climate resilient and better future. “There is only one thing in the way,” he said, “Us”.

The march proved that there is a counter-movement challenging this stagnation. From individuals to communities, from cities to neighbourhoods and families, millions are working to make a better world a reality. Against all adversities, people around the world embrace the urgency of action and lead where the supposed leaders have failed.

For me this is the single most important message and a source of hope to take back home. A new chapter of climate protection has opened written by the diverse, powerful stream which flooded the streets in New York and beyond – not to witness but to make history.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

* Diana Maciaga works with the Polish NGO Workshop for All Beings (Pracownia na rzecz Wszystkich Istot), which specialises in protection of the wildest treasures of Poland. She has participated in Global Power Shift and Power Shift Central & Eastern Europe and is sharing her experience through campaigns and coordinating a training for local Polish leaders – “Guardians of Climate”. She is currently one of the organisers of the Stop Elektrowni Północ (Stop the ‘North Power Plant’) campaign against a new coal-fired facility in Poland.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Fishermen's boats on the Mekong River in northern Laos. There are already 30 existing dams along the river, and an additional 134 hydropower projects are planned for the lower Mekong. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Aug 29 2014 (IPS)

Large-scale dams are likely having a detrimental impact on water quality and biodiversity around the world, according to a new study that tracks and correlates data from thousands of projects.

Focusing on the 50 most substantial river basins, researchers with International Rivers, a watchdog group, compiled and compared available data from some 6,000 of the world’s estimated 50,000 large dams. Eighty percent of the time, they found, the presence of large dams, typically those over 15 metres high, came along with findings of poor water quality, including high levels of mercury and trapped sedimentation.“The evidence we’ve compiled of planetary-scale impacts from river change is strong enough to warrant a major international focus on understanding the thresholds for river change in the world’s major basins." -- Jason Rainey

While the investigators are careful to note that the correlations do not necessarily indicate causal relationships, the say the data suggest a clear, global pattern. They are now calling for an intergovernmental panel of experts tasked with coming up with a systemic method by which to assess and monitor the health of the world’s river basins.

“[R]iver fragmentation due to decades of dam-building is highly correlated with poor water quality and low biodiversity,” International Rivers said Tuesday in unveiling the State of the World’s Rivers, an online database detailing the findings. “Many of the world’s great river basins have been dammed to the point of serious decline.”

The group points to the Tigris-Euphrates basin, today home to 39 dams and one of the systems that has been most “fragmented” as a result. The effect appears to have been a vast decrease in the region’s traditional marshes, including the salt-tolerant flora that helped sustain the coastal areas, as well as a drop in soil fertility.

The State of the World project tracks the spread of dam-building alongside data on biodiversity and water-quality metrics in the river basins affected. While the project is using only previously published data, organisers say the effort is the first time that these disparate data sets have been overlaid in order to find broader trends.

“By and large most governments, particularly in the developing world, do not have the capacity to track this type of data, so in that sense they’re flying blind in setting policy around dam construction,” Zachary Hurwitz, the project’s coordinator, told IPS.

“We can do a much better job at observing [dam-affected] resettled populations, but most governments don’t have the capacity to do continuous biodiversity monitoring. Yet from our perspective, those data are what you really need in order to have a conversation around energy planning.”

Dam-building boom

Today, four of the five most fragmented river systems are in South and East Asia, according to the new data. But four others in the top 10 are in Europe and North America, home to some of the most extensive dam systems, especially the United States.

For all the debate in development circles in recent years about dam-building in developing countries, the new data suggests that two of the world’s poorest continents, Africa and South America, remain relatively less affected by large-scale damming than other parts of the world.

Of course, both Africa and South America have enormous hydropower potential and increasingly problematic power crunches, and many of the countries in these continents are moving quickly to capitalise on their river energy.

According to estimates from International Rivers, Brazil alone is currently planning to build more than 650 dams of all sizes. The country is also home to some of the highest numbers of species that would be threatened by such moves.

Not only are Brazil, China and India busy building dams at home, but companies from these countries are also increasingly selling such services to other developing countries.

“Precisely those basins that are least fragmented are currently being targeted for a great expansion of dam-building,” Hurwitz says. “But if we look at the experience and data from areas of high historical dam-building – the Mississippi basin the United States, the Danube basin in Europe – those worrying trends are likely to be repeated in the least-fragmented basins if this proliferation of dam-building continues.”

Advocates are expressing particularly concern over the confluence of the new strengthened focus on dam-building and the potential impact of climate change on freshwater biodiversity. International Rivers is calling for an intergovernmental panel to assess the state of the world’s river basins, aimed at developing metrics for systemic assessment and best practices for river preservation.

“The evidence we’ve compiled of planetary-scale impacts from river change is strong enough to warrant a major international focus on understanding the thresholds for river change in the world’s major basins, and for the planet as a whole system,” Jason Rainey, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.

Economic burden

Particularly for increasingly energy-starved developing countries, concerns around large-scale dam-building go beyond environmental or even social considerations.

Energy access remains a central consideration in any set of development metrics, and lack of energy is an inherent drag on issues as disparate as education and industry. Further, concerns around climate change have re-energised what had been flagging interest in large dam projects, epitomised by last year’s decision by the World Bank to refocus on such projects.

Yet there remains fervent debate around whether this is the best way to go, particularly for developing countries. Large dams typically cost several billion dollars and require extensive planning to complete, and in the past these plans have been blamed for overwhelming fragile economies.

A new touchstone in this debate came out earlier this year, in a widely cited study from researchers at Oxford University. Looking at nearly 250 large dams dating back as far as the 1920s, they found pervasive cost and time overruns.

“We find overwhelming evidence that budgets are systematically biased below actual costs of large hydropower dams,” the authors wrote in the paper’s abstract.

“The outside view suggests that in most countries large hydropower dams will be too costly … and take too long to build to deliver a positive risk-adjusted return unless suitable risk management measures … can be affordably provided.”

Instead, the researchers encouraged policymakers in developing countries to focus on “agile energy alternatives” that can be built more quickly.

On the other side of this debate, the findings were attacked by the International Commission on Large Dams, a Paris-based NGO, for focusing on an unrepresentative set of extremely large dams. The group’s president, Adama Nombre, also questioned the climate impact of the researchers’ preferred alternative options.

“What would be those alternatives?” Nombre asked. “Fossil fuel plants consuming coal or gas. Without explicitly saying it, the authors use a purely financial reasoning to bring us toward a carbon-emitting electric system.”

Edited by: Kitty Stapp

The writer can be reached at cbiron@ips.org

A young man looks out at the La Boca transporter bridge, built in 1914, which stopped operating in 1960. This emblem of the Riachuelo river in Buenos Aires is being rebuilt as part of the clean-up of the river basin and is scheduled to begin working again in 2015. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, Aug 13 2014 (IPS)

Immortalised by a famous tango, the “Niebla del riachuelo” (Mist over the Riachuelo river) has begun to dissipate over Argentina’s most polluted river, much of which is lined by factories and slums. But two centuries of neglect and a complex web of political and economic interests are hindering a clean-up plan that requires a broad, concerted effort.

The 64-km Matanzas-Riachuelo river cuts across 14 Buenos Aires municipalities as it runs from the western Buenos Aires working-class suburb of La Matanza to the picturesque, lively neighbourhood of La Boca, where it flows into the Río de la Plata or River Plate.

In the 1937 tango by Enrique Cadícamo and Juan Carlos Cobián the river is described as “a murky anchorage where boats end up moored at the pier, destined to stay there forever”. But far removed from the poetic license of a tango, for two centuries the riachuelo was actually a foul-smelling dump for untreated sewage and industrial waste.

Now, thanks to the Integral Environmental Clean-up Plan approved in 2011, the situation has changed in the river known as Matanza at its source and Riachuelo where it runs into the Rio de la Plata.

“The mist is gone….because it had to do with the water pollution…so poor Cadícamo wouldn’t be able to write Mist over the Riachuelo river today,” Antolín Magallanes, executive vice president of the Matanza Riachuelo River Basin Authority (ACUMAR), told Tierramérica.

ACUMAR, made up of representatives of the national, provincial and Buenos Aires city governments and of the 14 municipalities crossed by the river, was ordered by the Supreme Court to clean up the river in 2006.

“In 30 years of democracy, the creation of ACUMAR [in 2006] was an enormous and historic stride forward, because it made it possible for the first time for three jurisdictions, including governments of different political stripes, to coordinate the management [of the river] and for civil society to oversee it,” Magallanes said.

“That is part of the clean-up. It’s not just the garbage that’s in the river, which reflects the failure of the different parts to join forces in the past,” he added.

An industrial area along the Riachuelo, with the port in the background, in Buenos Aires. Since the first factories were built along the banks in 1801, industrial waste has been dumped into the river. There are now 15,000 factories, of which 459 were reconverted to prevent them from polluting, while another 1,300 are in the process of doing the same. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

More than five million people – of the 15.5 million inhabitants of Greater Buenos Aires – live in the basin, 10 percent of them in shantytowns. Of that proportion, 35 percent have no running water and 55 percent have no sewer services.

As part of the clean-up plan, some 60 sunken ships were removed from the river, which the tango describes as a “grim cemetery of boats which, when they die, dream nevertheless that to the sea they are bound to go.”

Around 1,500 tons of solid waste was also removed from the river and its banks, and the wide towpaths along the river were reopened and paved to provide access to and control over the river.

In addition, 1.5 million people were incorporated in the water supply network, health assessments are currently being carried out in high-risk areas, and 14 health centres are under construction.

“We are doing something that didn’t exist before: an environmental health diagnosis specific to the Matanza-Riachuelo basin, which will offer new results,” Magallanes said.

But the non-governmental Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (FARN) said that “although what has been done was necessary, it falls far short in relation to the pending tasks.”

“Structurally very little was done,” the president of the independent Metropolitan Foundation, Pedro Del Piero, told Tierramérica. “Sanitation works have begun, with delays, to keep the Riachuelo from being an open-air sewer.”

The project has begun to go beyond the planning stage, thanks to 840 million dollars in financing from the World Bank.

A large waste water pipe will be built on the left bank of the Riachuelo to move the sewage to different treatment plants, to keep it from being dumped directly into the river. And a huge 11.5-km underground pipe will be installed to carry treated wastewater to the Rio de la Plata.

“That will make possible uses that have up to now been inconceivable, such as boat rides on the river and other recreational activities,” said World Bank official Daniel Mira-Salama.

Andrés Nápoli, director of FARN, is also calling for stricter controls of industrial pollution, along with a change in the current “extremely lax” legislation.

Environmental watchdog Greenpeace reported in June that there had been no improvement in the quality of the water, which still had only 0.5 mg of oxygen per litre, when the bare minimum to make aquatic life possible is 5.0 mg.

A 2008 study published in the Latin American Journal of Sedimentology and Basin Analysis found that soil on the banks of the river contained high levels of zinc, lead, copper, nickel and total chromium. But Magallanes wrote off the report as being based on “old” statistics.

Of a total of 15,000 factories officially registered in the river basin, 459 have been reconverted to stop polluting and another 1,300 – including the biggest polluters – are in the process of doing so.

“There is a high level of tension,” Magallanes admitted, adding that the basin “is kind of a metaphor for Argentina.”

The Riachuelo was at the centre of “the conquest, development and industrial revolution” in this country, and of the 2002-2003 economic crisis, which forced a number of factories to close down, driving up unemployment, he pointed out.

“That means there are many deeply rooted ways of doing things that must be changed, and awareness has to be raised among the companies,” he said.

Nápoli blamed the slow pace of change on “the huge web of political and economic interests in Buenos Aires,” aggravated by “political bickering” between the government of President Cristina Fernández and the opposition, which governs the capital.

ACUMAR “is constantly at the mercy of the political vicissitudes of the federal officials of the day,” Del Piero concurred.

But Magallanes said these were difficulties that were normal in democracy.

“In the past every jurisdiction did its cleaning up, had its little environmental manual, or didn’t do anything,” he argued.

ACUMAR relocated 122 families from high-risk zones, and is building over 1,900 housing units. It has also made headway with another 1,600 projects.

But Nápoli said it is not enough. “There are vulnerable people living along the banks of streams, or next to polluting industries. Six years after the Supreme Court ruling we still don’t know exactly who are at risk.”

He also called for the urgent removal or closure of open air dumps of varying sizes. Of the 186 dumps shut down in the basin, 70 percent are being used again, said Nápoli, who believes the origin of the problem dates back to a decision to put garbage disposal in the hands of municipal governments.

To solve the problem, ACUMAR is building municipal urban solid waste treatment plants.

“By clearing the mist off the river once and for all, we’re moving down a very positive path. From tension to transformation,” Magallanes said.

“Obviously there is still a great deal to be done,” he added. “But now we’re all finally talking about the river. That’s a good thing. It’s part of the recovery.”

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

The fabled Yamuna River – revered by Hindus as a ‘living Goddess’ -- has been reduced to a stinking drain. Credit: Gérard Janot/cc by 3.0

By Neeta Lal
NEW DELHI, Jul 7 2014 (IPS)

One of the first things that Narendra Damodardas Modi did after being anointed as the Indian prime minister on May 26 was to set up an exclusive ministry (Ganga Rejuvenation) under Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti to clean up the country’s national river, the Ganges.

However, the Ganges’ largest tributary, the Yamuna – also one of the most polluted in the world and which provides the capital city of Delhi with 70 percent of its water needs — was barely mentioned in Modi’s rhetoric."Entrenched corruption has stymied all attempts to address the problem. River cleaning is simply not a priority on the national agenda." -- an ecologist with Kalpavriksh

Critics point out that after a landslide win in the recent Lok Sabha (lower house) elections, Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party has made numerous references to the Ganges’ pollution (including organising a pan-India meet on the river on Jul. 7 featuring top experts) while totally ignoring the Yamuna.

Such neglect is hardly new. Despite millions of dollars being pumped into numerous ambitious and state-funded schemes, as well as direct intervention by the Supreme Court and government agencies, the fabled Yamuna – revered by Hindus as a ‘living Goddess’ — has been reduced to a stinking drain.

According to the Central Pollution Control Board, the country’s premier pollution monitoring agency, Delhi alone contributes up to 80 percent of the pollution load of the 1,370-km river. In 2010, the Indian Supreme Court even referred to the Yamuna as a “ganda nullah” (“dirty drain”) rather than a dirty river.

The Yamuna plays a pivotal role in Delhi’s life, providing water for nearly 57 million people who live in its floodplains. Most importantly, 92 percent of the river’s waters are used to irrigate 12.3 million hectares of agricultural land that feeds a sizeable portion of India’s 1.2 billion people.

The river’s pristine beauty even prompted the Mughals to build one of their most spectacular monuments on the Yamuna’s banks — the Taj Mahal.

Yet today, the river is impacted deeply by pollution as garbage from millions of households, municipal disposals and soil erosion due to deforestation sullies the river each day. Toxic chemical substances — insecticides, fertilisers, pesticides – only worsen the situation.

A World Health Organisation urban air quality database released on May 9 this year rang alarm bells in Delhi’s power corridors, forcing the administration to sit up and take note. According to the report, the air quality in Delhi is the worst in the world, with polluting industries brazenly discharging much of their refuse into the Yamuna in the absence of strong punitive action.

Following the report, Delhi’s Lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung constituted a high-powered committee – consisting of scientists and ecologists – to examine all aspects of air pollution, including pollution in the Yamuna caused by industrial and sewage discharges. The committee has been tasked with suggesting steps to check pollution and to devise both long-term and short-term measures to tackle this serious issue.

Experts say the extent of pollution of the Yamuna River is so shocking that it now has a permanent thick layer of foam covering it completely. Yamuna is often also described as a ‘dead river’ since its pollution has seriously inhibited the survival of fish or other marine life in its waters.

Unfortunately, the State Pollution Control Board as well as the Central Pollution Control Board have also failed to address Yamuna’s pollution. All the past directives of the apex court have also been flagrantly ignored.

“The Central Air and Water Pollution Prevention Act gives unrestricted powers to these statutory bodies to proceed against polluters but entrenched corruption has stymied all attempts to address the problem. River cleaning is simply not a priority on the national agenda,” says an ecologist with Kalpavriksh, a pan-India green NGO.

Although a large number of NGOs, pressure groups and citizens’ movements have been active in cleaning up the Yamuna, given the size and dimension of the problem, these piecemeal and sporadic efforts have not yielded any tangible benefits, adds the activist.

Environmentalists assert that treatment of effluents before their release into the river is far more vital than keeping a tab on the river and drains.

“We should learn from how countries abroad are scientifically recycling these wastes and using them for construction of new buildings and roads. Singapore recycles 98 per cent of its construction and demolition (C&D) waste. We need to better the existing systems,” says Delhi-based environmentalist Anumita Roy Chowdhury.

Until now, experts say, the Centre has spent approximately 300 million dollars under the Yamuna Action Plan (YAP) I and II to clean the river. The YAP’s first phase was launched in 1993. It then covered Delhi, eight towns in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and six towns in the state of Haryana.

Under YAP II, the focus was on the Yamuna’s 22-km stretch in Delhi. The government plans to spend another billion dollars in the next phase to clean the river.

Experts add that pesticide traces in the water cannot be removed with conventional treatment as has been the case so far. “It’s like trying to slay a dragon with a pen knife,” explains B.R. Rao, an environmental scientist formerly with the ministry of environment and forests.

“For micro pollutants such as pesticides, only more freshwater can reduce the percentage of traces in water. These cannot be dissolved or assimilated, but they can certainly be diluted to an extent which will gradually help whittle down the levels of pollution in the river,” adds Rao.

The Yamuna has a dilution requirement of 75 percent, explains Rao, which implies that for every 100 litres of wastewater, 75 litres of freshwater needs to be pumped into the river. With this fresh flow of water, pollutants (especially organic pollutants) dissipate to a large extent.

But at every step, this purified water is abstracted, and ever larger loads of pollution make their way into the river.

However, according to the Delhi-based think tank Center for Science and Environment, the main problem lies in the sub-optimal utilisation of the city’s sewage treatment plants (STPs).

Says Sushmita Sengupta of CSE, Delhi’s 17 STPs have a capacity to treat 2,445 MLD (million litres per day). “Going by the Comptroller Auditor General 2013 Report sewage generation estimate of 3,060 MLD, the city can treat about 80 per cent of its waste, but it actually treats 1,651 MLD, approximately 54 percent Why is Delhi unable to treat its sewage completely?”

Of its installed capacity of 2,445 MLD, about 585 MLD remains unutilised (as of 2011-12). With only 1,218 MLD of sewage being treated, there exists a wide gap between what is treated and what is not. In other words, about 46 per cent of the total waste generated by Delhi goes untreated into the river Yamuna.

Water experts also point out that the problem of sewage not reaching a treatment plant is also what scuppers the plans to clean the Yamuna. The city depends on its 6,400-km sewerage network to convey its waste to treatment facilities. But most of the time, this network does not function, leaving the treatment plants starved for sewage.

Illegal or unauthorised colonies only worsen the situation. Almost 50 per cent of Delhi lives in such colonies, generating ‘illegal’ sewage – sewage which is not transported in official sewers to official treatment plants. These colonies do not have drains to transport sewage.

The people living in these areas either defecate in the open or connect their wastewater drains to an open channel, which flows into a larger drain and eventually into the river.

“A paradigm shift is required in Delhi’s approach to clean the river. The city planners must swivel their attention from the standard hardware – sewer and STP – to comprehend the linkages between water, sewage and pollution and most importantly, the need for authentic data. The science on river cleaning needs a drastic change in India,” sums up Sengupta.

Air and chemical pollution are growing rapidly in the developing world with dire consequences for health, says Richard Fuller, president of the Pure Earth/Blacksmith Institute. Credit: Bigstock

By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jun 13 2014 (IPS)

Pollution, not disease, is the biggest killer in the developing world, taking the lives of more than 8.4 million people each year, a new analysis shows. That’s almost three times the deaths caused by malaria and fourteen times those caused by HIV/AIDs. However, pollution receives a fraction of the interest from the global community.

“Toxic sites along with air and water pollution impose a tremendous burden on the health systems of developing countries,” said Richard Fuller, president of the Pure Earth/Blacksmith Institute, which prepared the analysis as part of The Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP). GAHP is a collaborative body of bilateral, multilateral, and international agencies, national governments, academia and civil society.

Air and chemical pollution is growing rapidly in these regions and when the total impact on the health of people is also considered, “the consequences are dire,” Fuller told IPS.

This future is entirely preventable as most developed countries have largely solved their pollution problems. The rest of the world needs assistance, but pollution has dropped off the radar in the current draft of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), he said.

The SDGs are the U.N.’s new plan for development assistance for the next 15 years. Countries, aid agencies and international donors are expected to align their funding and aid with these goals when they are announced in September 2015.

“Pollution is sometimes called the invisible killer…its impact is difficult to track because health statistics measure disease, not pollution,” Fuller said.

As a result pollution is often misrepresented as a minor issue, when it actually needs serious action now, he said.

The GAHP analysis integrates new data from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and others to determine that 7.4 million deaths were due to pollution sources from air, water, sanitation and hygiene. An additional one million deaths were due to toxic chemical and industrial wastes flowing into air, water, soil and food, from small and medium-sized producers in poor countries.

The health burden of environmental pollution in these countries is on top of health impacts from infectious diseases, and smoking, said Jack Caravanos, professor of Environmental Health at the City University of New York and a technical advisor to the Blacksmith Institute.

It’s extremely difficult to estimate the health impacts from many thousands of toxic sites contaminated with lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium and obsolete pesticides, Caravanos told IPS.

But the one million death estimate is likely a gross underestimate since investigations into the scope of the problem have only just started. “We’ve recently found sites filled with obsolete pesticides in Eastern Europe that have some very toxic chemicals,” he said.

These chemicals don’t stay put. Rain washes them into soils and waterways, and wind blows toxic particles long distances, sometimes coating crops and food, Caravanos said. A 2012 study by Blacksmith estimated that mining waste, lead smelters, industrial dumps and other toxic sites affect the health of 125 million people in 49 developing countries.

“We have identified over 200 places with contaminated air, soil or water that are putting at risk some six million people,” said John Pwamang of the Ghana Environment Protection Agency.

“These include places with lead poisoning from recycling used lead-acid or car batteries, and e-waste dismantling areas, where cables are burnt in the open air and the toxic smoke poisons whole neighborhoods,” Pwamang said in a release.

A growing body of scientific evidence is revealing an astonishing array of illness including cancers, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, ADHD, autism, Alzheimer’s and depression, with links to the ever-increasing amount of toxic chemicals in our bodies, said Julian Cribb, author of the new book “Poisoned Planet: how constant exposure to man-made chemicals is putting your life at risk”.

“There are at least 143,000 man-made chemicals plus an equally vast number of unintentional chemicals liberated by mining, burning fossil fuels, waste disposal,” Cribb said in a release.

“Around 1000 new industrial chemicals are released every year, which the United Nations says are largely untested for human and environment health and safety.”

GAHP members worldwide have come together to urge the U.N. to spotlight pollution in the SDGs (see the growing list of supporters). A position paper and a draft of GAHP’s proposed revised SDG text have been created. These will be presented to the Open Working Group of the SDGs, meeting in New York City next week.

Photo courtesy of Greenpeace/Marine Photobank

By Bradnee Chambers
BONN, May 21 2014 (IPS)

Some of the Earth’s most delicate tropical paradises are being disfigured by the by-products of the modern age – marine debris: plastic bottles, carrier bags and discarded fishing gear. 

Just a tiny fraction of this originates from the islands themselves – most is generated on land and enters the sea through the sewers and drains; the rest comes from passenger liners, freighters and fishing vessels, whose crews often use the oceans as a giant waste disposal unit.  While much of the garbage sinks, some of it joins the giant gyres where the currents carry it across the globe.

"Marine debris casts its ominous shadow and threatens to break the virtuous circle which would otherwise guarantee sustainable livelihoods and incentives to protect wildlife."
Small Island Developing States (SIDS), recognised as a distinct group of nations by the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, lack the space to dedicate to landfill sites and do not have the resources to deal with the huge problem of marine debris that is being washed up on their doorstep – as the tides and currents wash the accumulated marine garbage onto their beaches.  Domestically, they can take steps to ensure that they do not add to the problem – American Samoa for instance has banned plastic bags – but the “polluter pays” principle would require that those responsible for producing the waste should be made responsible for disposing of it properly.

A litter-strewn beach is an eye-sore and with tourism playing a major role in the economies of many island states, marine debris can have substantial adverse financial implications threatening local businesses and employment prospects.

Palau has banned commercial fisheries in its huge territorial waters forsaking the lucrative licensing revenue and will develop ecotourism based on snorkelling and scuba diving as a sustainable alternative.  Alive, Palau’s sharks can bring in $1.9 million each over their life-time.  Dead, a shark is worth a few hundred dollars, most of it attributable to the fins used to make soup considered a delicacy in parts of East Asia.

In February, Indonesia became the world’s largest sanctuary for manta rays and banned the fishing and export of the species throughout the 2.2 million square miles surrounding the archipelago.  The numbers are about the same; as a tourist attraction, a manta ray is worth in excess of 1 million dollars; as meat or medicine no more than 500 dollars.

Whale-watching creates jobs while bird-watching boosts binocular and camera sales and both help hotel occupancy rates.  And the total number of international travellers broke the one billion mark for the first time in 2012 making tourism one of the main foreign exchange earners globally particularly for many developing countries, including SIDS.

But marine debris casts its ominous shadow and threatens to break the virtuous circle which would otherwise guarantee sustainable livelihoods and incentives to protect wildlife.

Sea birds inadvertently feed their young with plastic which then blocks the chicks’ intestines preventing them from eating properly and leading to a slow and painful death.  The staple prey of some marine turtles is jellyfish but the turtles often mistake plastic bags for their favourite food with same dire results.  For larger species such as whales, dolphins and seals, discarded fishing gear – ghost nets – are a problem as the animals become entangled in them.  This can impede the animals’ movement and ability to hunt as well as cause serious injury or even death through drowning.

Remote island habitats support a rich and diverse fauna often including unique endemic species and provide vital stop-over sites for migrants and breeding sites for marine birds. But long established bird colonies have fallen victim to another danger exacerbated by humans – that posed by invasive alien species.

The problem of rodent infestations is well documented.  Mice and rats have escaped from ships wreaking havoc on the local bird populations which had previously nested on the ground with impunity as there were no predators.  Eradication programmes have successfully rid 400 islands of their alien rodents.

Less well known is the phenomenon of “rafting” where the invaders also use marine debris as a vector – plastic bottles are harbouring a potentially devastating assortment of worms, insect larvae, barnacles and bacteria, and warmer waters arising from climate change increase the resilience of these unwanted stowaways making them an even more potent danger.

One of the fascinations of dealing with the animals covered by the Convention on Migratory Species is how they link different countries and even continents.  Many of the species are endangered and their conservation as well as the threats that they face require internationally coordinated measures.  This applies to marine debris, a singularly unwelcome “migratory species” whose continued presence CMS will be doing its utmost to eliminate.

Excerpt:

The Quibú river, running through the El Náutico neighbourhood in Havana, is full of garbage. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA, Jan 10 2014 (IPS)

The stench hits as you walk through the door of one of the pleasant houses along the Quibú river in the Cuban capital’s Náutico neighbourhood. “The garbage piles up, it stinks, and there are even rats,” said María Angélica Suárez, a local resident who is tired of living this way.

“The situation at the mouth of the river has always been bad…and things are worse now,” the 69-year-old pensioner told IPS. She and her neighbours suffer the effects of the urban waste that pollutes the Quibú river because of weak inspection and oversight and lax enforcement of environmental laws, among other causes.

“The trash, which washes down from upstream, accumulates and creates huge islands. It also piles up on the empty lot across the river. It makes you want to weep to see a place with such a beautiful view turned into a garbage dump,” said Suárez, one of the 1,200 people who live in this coastal neighbourhood on the west side of Havana.

She lives right where the river flows into the sea, after emerging 12 km back, from the confluence of the Auditor and Quiebra Hacha streams. Before reaching Náutico, it runs through poor neighbourhoods on the outskirts of Havana, a city that is home to 2.1 million of this Caribbean island nation’s 11.2 million people.

As it winds along the western fringes of the city, streams flow into it, but so does waste from semi-rural and urban slums.

Several Náutico homes and the Eliseo Reyes primary school, with a student body of 280, are located near Suárez’s house along the mouth of the river.

The dumping of sewage and solid waste was mentioned as one of the main causes of pollution of the Quibú basin, by the project “Environmental Sustainability in the City Province of Havana”, published in 2008 by a group of European and Latin American universities.

Other sources of contamination of the shallow river are linked, in different ways, to the activities of the Manuel Martínez Prieto sugar mill, biopharmaceutical companies, health clinics and hospitals, and agriculture, even though there are oxidation ponds and a liquid waste treatment plant in the basin to treat wastewater.

Raquel Duarte, another Náutico resident, told IPS that “the problem gets really bad when it’s been a while since it rained. The river dries up and doesn’t carry to the sea” the huge quantities of bottles, plastic bags, tires, other garbage, and sediment.

And the situation is aggravated by climate change, which has intensified the droughts, among other changes.

“What the institutions have done is sometimes cut the scrub and thickets across the river and clean up with bulldozers. But it keeps happening…and will continue to do so as long as they keep dumping so much stuff in the river,” said Duarte, a 57-year-old accounts assistant.

“I’ve had rats here, even though I keep everything clean. They come from over there,” she said, pointing to the empty lot.

Another local resident, who preferred not to be identified, said “This waste has names and faces. What’s wrong with people who dump waste? Don’t the police and inspectors fine or punish them?”

When asked about irregularities observed in environmental inspection and oversight, Ángel Alfonso, director of the governmental Environment Unit of the western province of Matanzas, told IPS that “the state inspection mechanisms do not all work together in a coordinated way against environmental violations.”

“More staff and funds are needed,” the official said. He pointed out that his unit, in charge of overseeing environmental protection in the western province of Matanzas, only has three specialised inspectors.

His team is currently training other inspectors, to apply articles of Decree Law 200, in force since 1997.

The law provides for fines of between eight and 90 dollars for those who “dump waste of any kind into the coastal area,” and up to 200 dollars in cases of hazardous waste.

But “people should feel the weight of the law more heavily,” said Alfonso, who called for “expanding the range of violations.”

For their part, legal experts Alcides F. Antúnez and Rafael Batista called for “moving from fines to the threat of prison, due to the steady increase in environmental violations” in Cuba, as they wrote in an article published by the Argentine magazine Pensamiento Penal in February 2013.

According to Antúnez and Batista, professors at the University of Granma, 730 km from the Cuban capital, the penal code should include a chapter or section dedicated to “ecological crimes,” in order to protect the environment as a “legal asset.”

They said that would be one more tool to encourage prevention, the most effective means of protecting the environment.

In October 2013, the local parliament began to modify the 1987 penal code and the 1977 law on penal procedure, with the aim of making prevention and law enforcement measures more effective.

Meanwhile, the people of Náutico have revealed another little-known cause of the situation at the mouth of the Quibú river.

On May 23, 2006, the river’s dirty water rose and covered nearly the entire neighbourhood – an unprecedented event according to Duarte, who has lived in Náutico since 1978.

To prevent further flooding, the riverbed was widened, with financing from the provincial office on water resources.

Duarte said she has observed that “now the river is not as deep, and the garbage piles up much more, although there have been no more floods.”

Suárez said “they didn’t dredge enough when they widened the river, which made the garbage problem worse.”

Knocking on doors, Suárez gathered the signatures of 42 local residents in 2007 on a letter that described the deplorable situation of the river and its delta, with photos to back it up. She delivered the petition to the government and the local environmental authorities.

“This was the only response we received,” she said, holding out a letter dated Jul. 17, 2007 and signed by engineer Tomás Rivera of the government Centre for Environmental Inspection and Control.

According to the letter, the Centre talked with the officials in charge of widening the river, in search of an answer.

“The plan is to complete the project in the second half of 2007; with this objective the sediment and waste accumulated at the mouth of the river would be removed,” says the letter signed by Rivera, in which the provincial office on water resources promises, among other things, to dredge the river annually.

But people in the community say the project was left incomplete, and that the river was only dredged once. “We need less garbage to be dumped and we need systematic clean-up actions,” Suárez said.

“Volunteer clean-up efforts are pretty much symbolic,” she said, referring to the campaigns organised several times a year by the Acualina environmental education project, which was founded in Náutico.

The citizen clean-ups bring together children and adolescents as well as adults to contribute their grain of sand, picking up trash in Quibú.

Tinago Rukanda, from Zimbabwe's Mashonaland Central Province, makes a living using his old car to transport passengers. But environmentalists here say the aged cars are contributing to air pollution. Credit: Jeffrey Moyo/ IPS

By Jeffrey Moyo
HARARE, Oct 28 2013 (IPS)

It is a common sight in Zimbabwe’s rural areas – dilapidated old cars making their way from one district to the next overloaded with chickens, maize, luggage and people.

Tazviona Matutu, 76, from Zimbabwe’s Mwenezi district in Masvingo Province, has been a passenger in these cars and he is grateful that the operators of these old and sometimes unroadworthy vehicles are willing to accept something other than cash for his fare.

“There are no buses here to ferry people from one point to another. These aged vehicles are [helping us] as we often pay our fare in hens and maize, as most of us are very poor,” Matutu told IPS.

But the use of these battered, old and noisy cars, which emit heavy exhaust fumes, has come at a high cost and is reportedly worsening air pollution in this southern African nation.

According to environmental lobby group Save the Environment Association, and independent environmentalist Gibson Mamutse, the continued use of these old cars could lead to disaster.

“[As of] August this year, pollution related to old cars used as public transport in villages has seriously worsened nationwide, which is really a disaster growing out of control,” Sifelumusa Mbihwa, director of Save the Environment Association, told IPS.

“In 2012, 23.3 percent of the country’s rural population complained of pollution resulting from old cars, while in August this year about 32. 4 percent complained [about pollution from old cars],” she explained.

In January, the Traffic Safety Council of Zimbabwe noted that 21,122 old vehicles were licenced in Zimbabwe’s rural areas and were being used as transport on rural routes traditionally shunned by legitimate public transport providers.

But Mbihwa said that the number of aged vehicles operating across the country was much higher.

“In our 2012 survey of rural car ownership in Zimbabwe … out of approximately seven million people in the countryside, three out of every 15 people own a working or dysfunctional aged vehicle through inheritance,” she said.

Zimbabwe National Traffic Police spokesperson Tigere Chigome said that most of the cars were unregistered and pointed out that it was difficult to police their use.

“We know there are unroadworthy vehicles operating in different places countrywide, but most of these aged cars are not registered nor licensed to carry passengers and really they have ultimately no paperwork legitimising their operations.

“There are no records for some of them and so to know how many they are nationwide would be difficult as they always avoid routes that are frequented by traffic cops,” Chigome told IPS.

Independent environmentalist Mamutse told IPS that the old vehicles were “worsening air pollution, threatening our environment in both cities and villages now.”

“Mwenezi’s case of [using old cars for transport] is merely an epitome of a larger problem in the country. Zimbabwe must brace to witness the worst consequences of these old cars in the countryside.

He said that according to his own ongoing research titled “Digging out the causes for Zimbabwe’s incessant droughts”, 65 to 70 percent of the total rural emissions were from veld fires, mining, agricultural and domestic activities, with emissions from old cars contributing 30 percent to this figure.

According to Clean Air Asia, an air quality network for Asia, over nine million tonnes of carbon dioxide was emitted in Zimbabwe in 2008 through industrial activity, vehicular and energy generation. Figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show that also during 2008 neighbouring Zambia, which has a population of 14 million, compared to Zimbabwe’s 13.7 million people, emitted 2.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.

But old cars are popular here. In 2010 the Zimbabwean government banned the importation of vehicles older than five years because they were polluting the environment. But a year later the government was forced to suspend the ban after pressure from second-hand car dealers who wanted to remain in business.

Though some of the cars used to provide transport in rural areas are more than 40 years old.

“The Peugeot 404 that I’m using to ferry passengers was used by my grandfather in the 1970s and I had to resuscitate it to earn a living, transporting passengers,” Artwell Muhomba, from Mwenezi district’s Maranda village, told IPS.

“[Old cars] are not only polluting the atmosphere, but they have become agents of noise pollution,” Isaac Maramba, a health inspector from Domboshava village in Mashonaland Central Province, 27 km north of Harare, told IPS.

But Arnold Nerupiri, the chairperson of the Domboshava Old Transport Association from Domboshava village, said that even though operators of old vehicles knew the environmental consequences of using them, many had no other way of earning a living.

“People operating businesses here [driving old cars] are aware of the environmental consequences of their practices. But really they want to put food on their tables as most of them are not formally employed,” Nerupiri told IPS.

The Umgeni River system supplies drinking water to about five million people in the city of Durban, South Africa. But demand for water has outstripped supply for the past seven years. Pictured here is Howick Falls, which lies on the Umgeni River. Credit: Brendon Bosworth/IPS

By Brendon Bosworth
KWAZULU-NATAL, South Africa, Oct 1 2013 (IPS)

In a few years, residents of the eThekwini municipality in the port city of Durban in South Africa could be drinking water that was once flushed down their toilets, as authorities are planning to recycle some of the municipality’s sewage and purify it to drinking quality standards.

“We’re going through a crucial water shortage, which is increased by the water demand of eThekwini,” Speedy Moodliar, the municipality’s senior manager of planning for water and sanitation, told IPS.

The municipality relies on the Umgeni river system for water. But demand on the system, which supplies drinking water to about five million people and fuels industry in the economic hubs of Durban and Pietermaritzburg, a town 66 kilometres from the coast, has outstripped supply for the past seven years.

To boost supply in future, the South African government has proposed building a dam with a capacity of 250 million cubic metres on the uMkhomazi river, the third-largest river in KwaZulu-Natal, and transferring water to the Umgeni system.

But this scheme will only be operational by 2024 at the earliest, said Moodliar. “Between now and when the uMkhomazi [project] comes online, [wastewater] re-use will be our mitigation measure.”

In dry countries like Israel, Egypt, and Australia treated wastewater is used for industry, landscaping and agriculture. But worldwide few countries put it directly into their drinking water supplies.

Singapore uses purified wastewater to meet 30 percent of its water needs, although just a small percentage goes to drinking water and the majority is used by industry. Citizens of Windhoek, the capital of South Africa’s arid northwestern neighbour Namibia, have been drinking recycled wastewater for over 40 years.

In 2011 the Beaufort West municipality, which serves close to 50,000 people, began treating its sewage for use as drinking water after a vicious drought, making it the first in South Africa to do so. According to a 2012 World Bank report “The future of water in African cities: why waste water?” few cities in Africa have functioning wastewater treatment plants and “only a small proportion of wastewater is collected, and an even smaller fraction is treated.”

eThekwini municipality plans to upgrade two of its existing, and underperforming, wastewater treatment plants – the KwaMashu and Northern treatment works, Moodliar explained.

To remove contaminants and clean the water to drinking quality standard, a three-stage system that treats effluent through ultra-filtration and reverse osmosis, as well as disinfection by ultraviolet light and chlorine would be used. The treated water would also be stored and tested before being released.

The purified water will be mixed with conventional drinking water at a ratio of 30 percent re-used water to 70 percent conventional, said Moodliar. It will feed the municipality’s northern regions, including Umhlanga, Durban North, Reservoir Hills, and KwaMashu.

Re-using wastewater in this way will add 116 megalitres of tap water to the municipality’s supply daily. This is enough to fill just more than 46 Olympic-size swimming pools. It is roughly 13 percent of the municipality’s current daily consumption, and will provide an estimated seven years of water security.

While it will cost more to produce drinking water through wastewater recycling – about 75 cents per kilolitre compared to 50 cents per kilolitre for conventional treatment – the municipality sees it as “the best fit,” said Moodliar.

The municipality has touted the effectiveness and safety of the proposed system, but there has been opposition to the plan, including the submission of a 5,000-signature petition during the public participation process last year.

Citizens have raised concerns about the safety of drinking the re-used water. “Recycling of toilet water to drinking water is a death sentence to the general public because of health implications,” wrote Jennifer Bohus in an email to Golder Associates, the firm that produced the basic assessment report for the wastewater recycling proposal.

The municipality, however, maintains that the water will be fit to drink.

“The technology is advanced enough that the quality of the water being returned is high,” Graham Jewitt, director of the Centre for Water Resources Research at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and chair of water resources management for state-owned Umgeni Water, told IPS. “Many cities all round the world use recycled water.”

“About 14 percent of water use in South Africa is actually water that’s being re-used, most of it indirectly,” Niel van Wyk, chief engineer with the Department of Water Affairs, responsible for strategic water resource planning in KwaZulu-Natal, told IPS.

Citizens opposing the plan also said the municipality, which loses 36 percent of its water annually, largely through leaks and illegal connections, should focus on fixing leaking pipes. Others proposed investment in seawater desalination plants, instead.

The potential for sucking seawater from the Indian Ocean and converting it to freshwater for the region is currently under investigation. But the process of seawater desalination, which involves pumping saltwater at high-pressure through a semi-permeable membrane that retains the salt, and allows water to pass through, remains costly.

Umgeni Water, the state-owned company that is the largest supplier of bulk potable water in KwaZulu-Natal, is doing a feasibility study for two desalination plants: one on the south coast, adjacent to the Lovu River, and one on the north coast near Tongaat, Shami Harichunder, corporate stakeholder manager for Umgeni Water, told IPS.

If built, these plants would be the largest desalination operations in the country, each capable of producing 150 megalitres of water a day. By comparison, the largest desalination plant in South Africa, in Mossel Bay in the Southern Cape, produces a tenth of that amount.

The cost to build one of the proposed plants is as much as 300 million dollars, according to Harichunder. The required technological components, like high-pressure pumps, are expensive, he said.

Desalination plants, however, can be built more quickly than large dams and transfer infrastructure, and also scaled up in future if needed, said the Department of Water Affairs’ van Wyk.

Umgeni Water’s feasibility study is to be completed in December this year. And the feasibility of building desalination plants will be compared to that of the proposal to dam the uMkhomazi river, said Harichunder.

Excerpt:

Eurasian Spoonbill wintering at the Okhla sanctuary in the heart of New Delhi city. Credit: T.K. Roy/IPS

By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI, Aug 22 2013 (IPS)

Every winter the Okhla wetlands, a charmed haven in the heart of India’s bustling capital city, play host to Greater Flamingoes, Greylag Geese, Tufted Pochards, Northern Shovelers and other exotic, feathered visitors winging in from colder climes as far away as Siberia.

These avian migrants join hundreds of local water birds to breed in the Okhla Bird Sanctuary and Wildlife Park – a four square kilometres patch of wetland on the Jamuna river. The river is struggling to survive amidst costly real estate and development projects in the state of Delhi on the west bank of the river and Uttar Pradesh state on the east.

Conservationists now warn that unless there is a halt to construction activity on the banks of the Jamuna and to the pumping of raw sewage and effluents into the river, the annual spectacle of colours and shapes winging into the Okhla sanctuary will soon be nothing more than a cherished memory.

According to Tarun Kumar Roy, coordinator of the Asian waterbird census of Wetlands International (WI), some 10,000 birds could be counted at the Okhla sanctuary a decade ago. “That number has now been reduced by half, to around 5,000 birds,” Roy told IPS.

Wetlands International, a Netherlands-based not-for-profit organisation, works to conserve wetlands and their resources for people and for the cause of biodiversity.

Roy, who has been working to get the Okhla sanctuary recognition as a site protected under the 1971 Ramsar Convention, says the dwindling bird numbers have dashed his hopes.

Other experts believe that it is still possible to gain recognition for the Okhla sanctuary as a Ramsar site so that it can benefit from international support through the treaty designed to stop encroachments on wetlands with ecological, economic, cultural, scientific and recreational significance.

“The fact that a good number of transcontinental migratory birds visit the Okhla sanctuary makes it an outstanding candidate for designation as a Ramsar site,” Faizi S. Faizi, who is a member of the expert committee on biodiversity and development at the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, told IPS.

Faizi says it is helpful that the Okhla sanctuary has been certified as an ‘Important Bird Area’ by Birdlife International for its ornithological importance.

Gopal Krishna, coordinator of Toxics Watch, a major environment group based in the capital, said it is up to the ministry of environment and forests to get the Okhla sanctuary rated as a Ramsar site. “If the ministry has failed in this regard it is only due to pressure from the powerful construction and real estate lobbies,” Krishna told IPS.

“It is hard to believe that the officials of the ministry are unaware of encroachments into a national sanctuary located barely five kilometres away from its offices,” said Krishna.

“How could, for example, a heavily polluting waste-to-energy incinerator come up on the edge of the park without ministry clearance?”

Krishna said the future of the Okhla sanctuary now rests greatly on a series of cases filed by environmentalists and local residents at the National Green Tribunal, a special fast-track court that handles contentious cases relating to environmental issues.

“The most important of these cases relates to the waste-to-energy incinerator that has been functioning since January 2012 within the eco-sensitive zone of the Okhla sanctuary,” said Krishna. “A judicial commission of the tribunal has established that the emissions from the plant are 25 times above the permitted limit.”

In July, the school of environmental sciences at New Delhi’s Jawaharalal Nehru University released the results of a study that found the air around Okhla to be severely polluted with lead, nickel, cadmium and cobalt that could only have come from the incinerator.

“The high chimneys of the Okhla incinerator are a serious threat to migratory birds since they emit a range of toxic gases into their flight path,” said Roy.

On Aug. 14, the tribunal suspended further unauthorised construction in a 10-km wide eco-sensitive zone around the Okhla sanctuary, and ordered a fresh survey of the area by central and provincial authorities with a view to protecting it.

Faizi said the tribunal order has come not a moment too soon. “The Okhla waste-to-energy incinerator is absolutely unacceptable in this critical bird area and must be removed without further delay,” he said.

According to Roy, although the total number of visiting birds has declined, the range of bird species represented at the Okhla sanctuary appears to be increasing. “A total of 330 bird species has been recorded at the Okhla sanctuary, although some species are no longer being sighted.”

Feathered visitors to the Okhla sanctuary that figure on the ‘red-list’ of endangered bird species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature include the Ferruginous Duck, Black-tailed Godwit, River Lapwing, Egyptian Vulture, Oriental Darter, Painted Stork, Black-bellied Tern and Black-headed Ibis.

The tribunal is currently hearing multiple petitions asking for intervention against property developers, builders and a ‘sand mining mafia’ that defy existing rules that can help protect the Okhla sanctuary.

After it was discovered that illegal sand mining had caused the Jamuna to shift its course eastward, a crackdown involving seizures and arrests was carried out by Durga Shakthi Nagpal, administrator of Uttar Pradesh’s Gautam Budh Nagar district in which much of the Okhla sanctuary falls.

But on Jul. 28, three months after the crackdown was launched, Nagpal was controversially suspended by her political bosses in what was widely seen as a backlash from the construction industry that uses large quantities of river sand for its cement and concrete mixes.

Faizi said that only a people’s movement could save the sanctuary, which acts as a ‘green lung’ for congested and polluted Delhi that is home to 20 million people. “Recognising the Okhla sanctuary as a Ramsar site would be the best way to generate public interest in protecting one of the world’s truly unique wetlands.”

Styrofoam containers in one of the many drainage canals in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. Most dump into the Caribbean Sea after passing through poor neighbourhoods, like this one in Cité Soleil, where the human and animal fecal matter, styrofoam, and other trash regularly flood the zone after heavy rains. Credit: HGW/Marc Schindler Saint-Val

By Correspondents
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Aug 16 2013 (Haiti Grassroots Watch)

Despite two government decrees making their import and usage illegal, styrofoam cups and plates are used and littered all over the capital, as well as bought and sold, wholesale and retail, completely out in the open.

The first decree, dated Aug. 9, 2012, went into effect on Oct. 1, 2012, as part of a decree that also outlawed black plastic bags, used by street vendors as well as in greenhouses all over the country.“Plastic trash is a sanitation problem and a public health problem. It is also a problem because of the damage it causes to coral and marine ecosystems.” -- former environment minister Ronald Toussaint

The environment minister at that time, Ronald Toussaint, did not sign the 2012 decree, which was announced and lauded by various media and environmental websites as a big step forward for Haiti.

“Because of my experience in this domain, I did not sign the document,” Toussaint told Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW). “The concerned parties – the polluters, the importers, and the business people – were not part of its elaboration. The government’s decree offered a very reductionist approach to dealing with plastic waste.”

Toussaint said he was also worried about the possible impact on agriculture, since many people and organisations sprout seeds in small black plastic bags.

In spite of the obvious failure of the 2012 decree, the government of President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe recently adopted a new one, dated Jul. 10, 2013 and written in much the same language.

There is an “interdiction on producing, importing, commercializing, and using, in any form whatsoever, plastic bags and objects made of styrofoam for food purposes, such as trays, bottles, bags, cups, and plates,” according to the Jul. 10 issue of the government’s official journal of record, Le Moniteur.

“As soon as this decree becomes applicable, beginning on August 1, 2013, all arriving packages that contain these objects will be confiscated by customs authorities and the owners will be sanctioned according to customs regulations,” the decree reads.

In addition to being a bit demagogic in nature – given that the first decree was completely ignored – the new decree has also angered the Dominican Republic’s industries, Haiti’s principal suppliers of styrofoam plates and cups for take-out food.

A sea of styrofoam

If the last 10 months are any indication, there is little reason to think the new decree will bring about much change. The streets of the capital region are awash in styrofoam. Any passerby, police officer, or state official can see bright white products, as well as the illegal black plastic bags, being used and discarded everywhere.

Plastic trash has been catastrophic for the environment. The capital region is drained by open canals that lead directly to the Caribbean Sea. In addition to clogging the canals and causing flooding in the poor neighbourhoods through which it passes, sea currents carry the trash all over the world.

“Plastic trash is a real problem, in my opinion,” Toussaint said. “It is a sanitation problem and a public health problem. It is also a problem because of the damage it causes to coral and marine ecosystems.”

Easy to see and to buy

In spite of its dangers, and in spite of the two decrees, styrofoam products are everywhere.

An investigation by HGW in downtown Port-au-Prince and the adjoining city of Pétion-ville in May and June 2013 found that almost all of the street-food vendors were using the illegal products.

Downtown, on four streets studied, 28 of 28 vendors – 100 percent – used styrofoam dishes and cups. In six streets of Pétion-ville, journalists tallied 20 of 26 vendors – 77 percent – using the illegal products. A visit last week, after the new decree went into effect, revealed that nothing had changed.

Two very popular Pétion-ville restaurants, Contigo Bar Resto Club and Mac Epi, were also using styrofoam products, both before and after Aug. 1. And many – perhaps even all – of the nearly a dozen franchises and restaurants of the popular Epi d’Or chain use styrofoam take-out containers. Many also use styrofoam cups and styrofoam plates for those “eating in”.

On its website, Epi d’Or says it works “with strict respect for laws and for the public interest”.

Asked via email why the chain has been using the products, which have been illegal for over 10 months, owner Thierry Attié responded that his outlets had replaced the cups but not the “clamshells”. However, HGW observed styrofoam cups in use at Epi d’Or’s Pétion-ville outlet on Aug. 9, the day of Attié’s message.

Styrofoam products are also widely available wholesale. Of 11 food and general supply stores or stands visited in June and July, 10 openly sold the illegal products. On Aug. 5, five days after the new decree made them illegal for a second time, they were still on sale.

Speaking in June, one businessman told HGW that nobody really paid attention to the first degree.

“The ban was not applied,” said the merchant while working at his store on Rue Rigaud. “We heard about it on the radio.” (The HGW journalist did not reveal his identity and instead pretended to be a client. He did not ask most businesspeople for their names, but HGW has meticulous records of the stores visited.)

A businesswoman supervising a team unloading merchandise from a truck at her Rue Rigaud store told HGW, as did at least two other businesspeople, that she bought her styrofoam products at SHODECOSA, one of the city’s industrial parks housing assembly industries which receives regular deliveries from the Dominican Republic in large, closed containers.

SHODECOSA (Superior Housing Development Corporation S.A.) is the country’s biggest private industrial park. It belongs to the WIN Group, the conglomerate owned by the Mevs family, which also has interests in maritime transport, assembly industries, and ethanol. WIN also runs the country’s largest private port, TEVASA, in the Varreux area of Cité Soleil.

“Ever since Lamothe became prime minister, I stopped going to the Haitian-Dominican border because only the bourgeois have the containers that are authorised to cross the border with merchandise,” the businesswoman claimed.

“It is not easy to import plates,” another businessman said. “You have to work really hard to get them at SHODECOSA for an exorbitant price.”

A third said he buys at SHODECOSA and also buys them by the container at the border towns Elias Pinas and Malpasse.

HGW did not speak with WIN Group about the allegations. However, the fact that various Pétion-Ville stores told matching stories about where they got their products indicates that during the 10 months of the first decree, and perhaps still, styrofoam plates, cups, and other items were for sale somewhere inside the park.

A plastic decree vs. a rigid policy?

In the second anti-plastics decree, the Haitian government promised, “the Ministry of Economy and Finances will take the steps necessary to facilitate the import of inputs, recipients, and paper products or cardboard that are 100% biodegradable such as bags made of fiber or sisal.”

To date, apart from a raid on small wholesalers in the poor neighbourhood of Marché Solomon on Aug. 12, no “steps” have been announced, nor have there been any major confiscations or arrests at places like Epi d’Or or the SHODECOSA industrial park.  Restaurants, street sellers and others are still using styrofoam cups and plates that will eventually end up in ravines and canals.

Another law meant to protect the environment makes tree-cutting illegal, but piles of planks cut from Haitian trees are for sale on city streets all over Haiti.

Haiti Grassroots Watch is a partnership of AlterPresse, the Society of the Animation of Social Communication (SAKS), the Network of Women Community Radio Broadcasters (REFRAKA), community radio stations from the Association of Haitian Community Media and students from the Journalism Laboratory at the State University of Haiti.

South Africa’s 232-kilometre Umgeni River is clean upstream but the closer it gets to the sea, the dirtier it becomes. Credit: Brendon Bosworth/IPS

By Brendon Bosworth
HOWICK, South Africa , Aug 14 2013 (IPS)

Over the course of a 28-day trek down South Africa’s Umgeni River, which flows from the pristine wetlands of the Umgeni Vlei Nature Reserve to the Durban coastline, Penny Rees, a coordinator for the Duzi uMngeni Conservation Trust, witnessed the polar opposites of river health.

The trust is a nonprofit organisation that works to conserve the Umgeni and its tributary, the Msunduzi river. At the Umgeni River’s source the water ran clean and was good enough to drink for Rees, and the four volunteers who joined her in walking the length of the 232-kilometre river and documenting its health. Further downstream, after the river had wound past agricultural land and urban terrain, the water became sludgy and smelly.

“Sometimes you can smell it, like [we could] in Durban the last time we crossed the river,” Rees told IPS during an interview at her home in Howick, 97 kilometres north of the port city Durban. “You get to know the colour of the water – [it has] this grey, grungy look, and it stinks of sewage.”

The Umgeni River supplies drinking water to more than five million people, and is the main source of water for the cities of Durban and Pietermaritzburg town 66 kilometres from the coast. Rees’s sojourn further highlights the work of scientists who have pinpointed pollution problems in the river.

Ongoing sewage sagas

Like other rivers in South Africa, the Umgeni is under pressure from untreated sewage entering it. Poor infrastructure and surcharging sewers in places like Mpophomeni, a low-cost housing settlement upstream of Midmar Dam, have led to high levels of E. coli and nutrients flowing into the dam, Simon Bruton, a hydrologist with environmental consulting firm GroundTruth, told IPS. Midmar Dam is a large dam with a capacity of 235 million cubic metres of water on the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg.

While Mpophomeni accounts for just 2.4 percent of Midmar Dam’s catchment area, it produces about half of the E. coli and 15 percent of the phosphorous entering the dam, according to a 2009 study by GroundTruth.

Projections indicate that the sewage pollution entering the Umgeni River, combined with nutrients from run-off from dairy, pig and poultry farms, could lead to Midmar and the nearby Albert Falls Dam becoming “eutrophic” – rich in nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorous that promote algal growth – by 2019.

When dams enter this nutrient-rich state, algae grows in them.

“A lot of the algae that blooms can be toxic to human contact so you wouldn’t be able to use the water for recreational purposes any more,” said Bruton. “The other problem it creates is that it significantly pushes up the water treatment costs because that biomass of algae causes problems for water purification, and it’s quite costly to remove.”

Overburdened wastewater works

Wastewater treatment plants that empty treated effluent into the river are also oversubscribed, adding to contamination issues. At four of the plants operated by state-owned company Umgeni Water, compliance rates for the quality of treated water pumped into the river dropped to 71.6 percent in June 2013, according to an Umgeni Water audit report. A compliance rate of 95 percent is considered acceptable.

The overall lack of compliance was chiefly due to problems at the Darvill plant, which treats industrial and domestic wastewater from the city of Pietermaritzburg.

The Darvill plant is overloaded, Shami Harichunder, corporate stakeholder manager for Umgeni Water, told IPS. The company has put out a tender valued at millions of dollars to increase the plant’s capacity by over 50 percent, and has spent about 500,000 dollars on additional aeration facilities, which are soon to be commissioned, he said.

Companies that pump industrial effluent to the plant, and fail to meet their permit obligations for the quality of effluent they discharge, also “significantly” affect the plant’s ability to process wastewater, Harichunder said.

However, compliance at the Howick plant, which is running near to full capacity, was at 90 percent for June 2013.

Downstream pollution

Earlier this year, the Umgeni River made headlines as “one of (the) dirtiest” rivers in South Africa, based on the release of a study for South Africa’s Water Research Commission. The study analysed levels of viral and bacterial contaminants in the section of the river that stretches from Inanda Dam, close to Hillcrest, to the river mouth in Durban.

The researchers found bacteria, including salmonella and shigella, as well as viruses, such as Hepatitis B, in every sample they took.

Many of the bacteria and viruses found in the samples are potentially pathogenic to humans and have demonstrated the ability to kill human tissue cultures, one of the study’s authors Johnson Lin, who is based at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, told IPS.

The river water failed to meet the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry’s water quality guidelines for recreational and drinking use. The results “would raise concerns for people who may consume water directly from the river without any form of treatment,” the researchers concluded.

Lin points to outbreaks of diarrhoea as a potential risk to those who drink contaminated river water. And the paper highlights that in South Africa, 2.6 percent of all deaths are attributable to unsafe water supplies, and inadequate sanitation facilities and hygiene.

River shows its strength

During their month-long sojourn, Rees and her team documented other negative impacts on the important river. They saw the detrimental effects of sand mining operations, illegal dumping of trash on the river’s banks, along with the proliferation of invasive aquatic plants that thrive in high nutrient conditions created from agricultural run-off and sewage contamination.

Despite this, Rees was struck by the fact that, based on the water sampling the team did, water quality could once again improve in sections of the river that were not impacted by human activity for long stretches.

“The miracle is that if you give [the river] a long enough gap without any impact, the water returns to top quality,” she said.

With that in mind, Rees is advocating designation of untouched buffer zones between major contamination points along the river. “You’re always going to have a spill from a wastewater works, sooner or later,” she said. “At least then you know that if there’s a problem you need x-number of kilometres where there is no impact and the river will [be] clean.”

Excerpt:

The European Union Commissioner for Climate Action, has called for the European Investment Bank, the largest institutional bank in the world, to take a leading role in eliminating public support for fossil fuels. Pictured here is the Canadian Brandon Generating Station is a subbituminous coal- and natural gas-fired station. Credit: Bigstock

By Ida Karlsson
BRUSSELS, Jul 14 2013 (IPS)

The European Investment Bank, the largest institutional bank in the world, is facing criticism for its funding of fossil fuel projects and for weaker standards for lending to coal plants than currently proposed in both the U.S. and Canada.

The EIB now promotes clean energy more – but fossil fuels still constitute a great part of the bank’s energy portfolio. The bank lends more to the energy sector than to any other except transport.

Connie Hedegaard, the European Union Commissioner for Climate Action, has called for EIB to take a leading role in eliminating public support for fossil fuels. As a public bank, the EIB’s financial operations are guaranteed by European taxpayers’ money.

With lending greater than that of the World Bank – 52 billion euros in 2012 compared to the World Bank’s 40 billion euros for last year – EIB engages in investment projects in some 160 non-EU countries throughout the world, beside the lending it provides within the EU. EIB’s total assets in 2012 reached 508 billion euros, making the bank the largest multilateral financier.

The EIB announcement of a review of its lending policy in late June drew criticism from climate activists as running counter to the EU’s climate and energy policies. Critics claim that the bank’s continual funding of coal projects is not compatible with the EU’s low-carbon future.

The draft policy does tighten the lending conditions for all types of fossil fuel projects, but the restrictions proposed (500gCO2/kWh) on emission standards on coal power plants financed by the bank are weaker compared to what is proposed in the U.S. (440gCO2/kWh) and currently in place in Canada (420gCO2/kWh).

Climate activists warn that exceptions included in the draft policy could mean that all forms of energy production could be eligible for EIB financing in cases where a plant contributes to the security of supply, economic development or poverty alleviation.

The bank spends billions of euros every year on energy projects that have a big impact on the climate. In 2009-2010 the bank’s lending to fossil fuel projects was more than a quarter of the overall energy lending, according to EIB figures. In 2010, 18 billion euros of EIB lending was devoted to the energy sector.

“EIB is a long-time lender, and lends money where it is most needed,” president of the bank Werner Hower said at a meeting in Brussels earlier this week.

But CEE Bankwatch and fellow campaign group Counter Balance, a European coalition of development and environmental organisations, sharply criticise EIB priorities, urging the bank to clean up its energy lending portfolio.

Berber Verpoest, advocacy coordinator at Counter Balance points out that EIB invested 190 million euros in a new Ford factory in Turkey in 2012 and granted a loan of 500 million euros to the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) in 2011.

“The Climate Change Framework Loan in Brazil illustrates the absurdity and lack of a clear selection criteria for the EIB,” he told IPS.

Bankwatch reported in December last year that EIB granted the loan to the car giant for the company’s relocation of production to Turkey not long after Ford Europe announced a shutdown of its production sites in Genk in Belgium and in Southampton in England.

Under the headline “Half a billion of European public money well spent in Brazil?” Counter Balance question the investment where money intended for projects to stop climate change was granted as a loan to BNDES, a bank condemned by Brazilian civil society organisations such as the environmental law organisation Aida for lacking socio-environmental perspectives in its lending.

Hower said during the meeting in Brussels this week that the bank’s investments could and should be reviewed.

“We are developing our new energy policies now, one of the most touchy issues you can talk about. But we are doing it in a dialogue and open oriented process with the NGOs.

“Before the board of directors will address the issue in the end of July we will have a four-week dialogue mechanism with NGOs and civil society going on. EIB needs public scrutiny and supervision and it is necessary that we have NGOs who are having a very close look at what we are doing.”

The phosphate processing plant of Gabes, seen here with phosphogypsum debris in the foreground. Credit: Justin Hyatt/IPS

By Justin Hyatt
GABÈS. Tunisia, Jun 7 2013 (IPS)

The story of Gabès and the local phosphate industry follows a plot that is all too familiar: an underdeveloped town located in an industrial region boasts one major lucrative industry with high output and export values, but the local population and surroundings experience alarming levels of illness and environmental blight.

But locals are no longer remaining as silent as they once were, holding a festival to mark World Environment Day on Jun. 5 and taking other actions such as protesting and using anti-pollution graffiti to increase awareness about the situation in Gabès.

The sixth largest city and a major industrial hub in southern Tunisia, Gabès is home to the state phosphate processing plant. The factory, operated by Group Chimique Tunisien (GCT), processes phosphate from Gafsa and the interior of the country into phosphorus, then exports the product worldwide.

Gabès’s industrial sector dates as far back as the middle of the twentieth century. By 2007, with an annual output of phosphate reaching 8 million tonnes, Tunisia became fifth in the world for phosphate production.

“It is an enormous industry” amounting to 30 percent of Tunisia’s gross national product (GNP), says Haythem Nasfi, director of the Gabès branch of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR).

GCT employs 3,000 workers, and on days when the production cycle runs at full speed, daily profits can reach 11 million TND, roughly 6.8 million U.S. dollars. But with a vast industrial zone less than one kilometre from the edge of town, the factories’ activities inevitably have severe repercussions for both human health and animal life.

Gabès has the highest rate of cancer in Tunisia, and in the neighbourhood closest to the factory, Chott Salam, lung cancer can be found in one out of 10 households. Kidney cancer rates are slightly higher, with 12 percent of families affected. Likewise, bone fragility, allergies and stillbirth all feature higher than average rates."You always want to sleep. You never have enough energy [in Gabès]."
--Haythem Nasfi

“Everyone is tired. You always want to sleep. You never have enough energy,” Nasfi said, citing a common complaint among Gabèsiens. Simply taking a short trip to the nearby touristic town of Matmata leads to a dramatic improvement in mental facilities, he added.

Affecting wildlife

Meanwhie, the Oasis of Chott Salam, which is located directly beside the industrial area and once teemed with bird and animal life, has become more of an industrial wasteland, unsuitable for wildlife or recreation.

Local fish populations suffer too. Since 1965 over 200 species have been lost, reducing biodiversity in the gulf to as few as 15 fish species.

The natural ecosystems inherent not just to this now damaged oasis but also to the entire Gulf of Gabès  are unique, their warm waters providing a special reproduction zone for species of the Mediterranean Sea. Noteworthy here are the waders and waterfowl, as well as marine vegetation such as seagrass and posidonia.

According to ecologist and designer Safouane Azouzi, a native of Gabès, Chott Salam is considered the only maritime oasis in the world. Yet currently over 400 sources of fresh water feeding into the oasis have dried up because of chemical pollutants, and the loss of adequate habitat and sources of uncontaminated water has forced many species to either find other habitats or simply dwindle in number.

Authorities have so far kept silent on the pollution issue and have yet to openly admit that the problem exists. Most Gabès residents believe that the government simply doesn’t want to cough up the money for its modernisation.

The most critical reform would involve ending the large-scale discharge of phosphogypsum, a by-product of the production cycle. The organisation SOS Environnement Gabès asserts that the daily amount of phosphogypsum that is leaked into the sea reaches a whopping 28, 720 tonnes.

Phosphogypsum, a radioactive reaction of phosphate ore with sulfuric acid, are strewn across the ground leading from the factory to the sea, and waves pounding the empty beach consist of ink-black water. In the United States, large quantities of phosphogypsum are required to be stored in sequestered large stacks.

Taking on pollution

But while no palpable steps toward factory reform have been observed by the citizens of Gabès, environmental activism has been taken to new heights.

The city now boasts 23 civil associations working to bring the pollution issue to the forefront of public discourse. The results are paying off. “Stop the Pollution” graffiti adorns the facades of numerous buildings, and non-violent protests such as roadblocks frequently figure into the routine used by campaigners.

The Association to Protect the Oasis of Chott Salam has spearheaded recent awareness-raising efforts, including a festival staged on the Jun. 5, World Environment Day. Over 1,000 participants marched through the streets to the scene of the festival, chanting, “We want to live.” Even more locals visited information stands or listened to anti-pollution rap and hip-hop.

Organiser Neder Chkiwa remarked that the previous year witnessed only a fraction of the current level of interest. The organisers have packed the month of June with numerous events, such as distributing flyers in shopping centers or holding anti-pollution graffiti contests.

The possibility for citizens to actively engage with this issue is in fact one of the benefits of living in Tunisia after the revolution. “During the time of Ben Ali, people might have complained behind closed doors,” Nasfi told IPS. Yet today this taboo has been broken, and not only citizens can discuss the problem openly, but they have also become de facto environmentalists.

Before the revolution, any open act of protest would have been unthinkable. “You would have gone straight to jail” Chkiwa noted.

SOS Environnement Gabès has been operating under the radar for a number of years, and they are particularly pleased with the new possibilities to protest. “We pin a lot of our hopes on the new generation, which has the most at stake and deserves to have healthy living conditions, without having to flee the city,” a member of the organisation, who requested anonymity, told IPS.

Dinah Abdelwahad, who hails from Gabès but currently lives in Tunis as an interior designer, maintains the same hopes. “While the activists are slowly but surely making progress to change things, there is still an imbalance of power. Those running the factories and in government have more money and political influence.”

“But I remain optimistic that things will soon pick up, and we will experience real change,” Abdelwahad concluded.

Children fishing in Havana Bay at dusk. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA, Jun 5 2013 (IPS)

On a piece of paper, Jennifer Rivas draws a beach, with little girls carrying bags of trash and signs that say “Let’s take care of the environment.” The 10-year-old is part of an educational programme, Friends of the Bay, that involves 322 schools in the Cuban capital.

The initiative, created in 2005 by the State Working Group for the Clean-Up, Conservation and Development of Havana Bay (GTE-BH), brings together thousands of students from different grades in environmental “circles of interest,” where they learn to take care of the bay.

“Environmental education, especially among the new generations, is a cross-cutting focus of all clean-up and monitoring actions,” Johana Socarrás, GTE-BH director of environmental education and community work, told IPS.

Nationwide, Havana Bay is the bay that requires the most investment annually for environmental clean-up.

In 2011, the national statistics office reported that nearly 68 percent of financing for cleaning up harbours and bays of national interest went to Havana Bay, which in the 1980s was included on a United Nations list of the most heavily polluted bays in the world.

Between 1998, when it was founded, and 2012, the GTE-BH reduced pollution levels in Havana Bay by 58 percent, according to sources with the Science, Technology and Environment Ministry. In 1998, the bay’s dissolved oxygen levels were down to zero, making marine life impossible.

In parallel with clean-up work and the reduction of sources of pollution, the GTE-BH also set out to raise environmental awareness among the new generations in the 10 Havana municipalities that surround the bay and its 85-kilometre basin.

“They are the future businesspeople, workers and technicians. If they receive environmental education from an early age, then when they are men and women, many will act responsibly with respect to the environment,” Socarrás said.

Volunteers are teaching children and adolescents about protecting the environment and maintaining the clean-up work achieved by the group — which is also responsible for monitoring the bay’s waters and industrial waste, environmental legislation, and reforestation in the area.

At schools located in the basin’s surroundings, younger students work with scale models, drawings, plays and poetry, while older students get involved in research projects, visit sites that are sources of pollution, and clean up affected areas.

Yusneibi Guibert, a primary school teacher in the Havana municipality of Regla and a member of Friends of the Bay, took her students to observe the coastal health of their community, which is on the bay’s shoreline.

“There was a small dump site, and we cleaned up cans and other rubble. We didn’t continue because we didn’t have more resources. We also went to the Ñico López oil refinery (near the bay) to see how they prevent air and water pollution,” she told IPS.

According to the GTE-BH, due to the activities of this refinery and the transport of fuel through the port of Havana, an environmental accident occurs at least once annually, involving oil spills in the bay, which is pocket-shaped and has a narrow entry.

In addition, 106 sources of pollution dump waste into the bay, which is 5.2 square kilometres and has an average depth of nine metres. Along with its seawall and seaside avenue, the Malecón, the bay is the centre of life in the capital, home to 2.2 million of the country’s 11.2 million people.

On June 5, World Environment Day, the Science, Technology and Environment Ministry informed the local media that 57.6 percent of national entities with dangerous waste and unused, expired chemical products were implementing management plans at the close of 2012.

In Diez de Octubre, Havana’s most densely-populated area, specialist Álvaro J. Pérez is working with more than 100 schools associated with the environmental education programme. “Doing projects with boys and girls multiplies actions. They learn and involve their families and the community,” he told IPS.

Children have been identified as a group with a large capacity for environmental activism in Cuba.

“Children and the elderly have an incredible potential,” Alba Camejo, coordinator of the environmental communication project Árbol de Vida (Tree of Life), told IPS. “Many things are being done through initiatives that come spontaneously from the community, aside from what is done through institutions,” she said.

Sian Pérez, 11, learned in his environmental circle of interest that the bay’s waters need to be protected. “That way, fish and human beings are not affected,” said the student from the Leonardo Valdés school in Regla.

“I used to know a little about it, but now I know more about how to take care of it (the bay) and not throw garbage into the ocean. I also learned that we should tell other people not to pollute, so that the pelicans will always be in our bay,” he told IPS.

“That’s how I would always like to see the bay — clean and pretty,” said Jennifer Rivas, as she looked at her finished drawing.

The science club at Raúl Cepero Bonilla secondary school took a trip to the Luyanó River, which empties into the bay and carries almost 90 percent of waste that comes from tributaries.

Thanks to their trip, the club promoted the construction of septic tanks among hog breeders located on the riverbanks, to prevent the dumping of manure into the water.

In the town of Guanabacoa, schools that are not located within the bay’s basin also joined the project, according to Rosa Tuñón, a school health advisor who oversees environmental work in education.

“The knowledge and understanding that we share are useful for all environments,” she told IPS. “We have seen progress among students in terms of their environmental knowledge thanks to the programme. Clean-up work is done, and students and parents are encouraged to participate in festivals and contests about ecology,” she explained.

Different projects have been carried out in Havana Bay with international financing, from sources such as the Global Environment Facility and Japan’s International Cooperation Agency.

Fed up with oil spills from facilities belonging to Mexico’s state oil company Pemex, residents of two communities in the southeastern state of Tabasco are taking the country’s largest company to court in a bid for compensation for damage to the environment and agriculture.

The people of Cunduacán and Huimanguillo, which have a combined population of 300,000, will present a class action lawsuit against Pemex in June.

Oil rigs and pumps. Credit: Bigstock

“There have been several harmful effects; we have carried out tests on soils, sediments and water and we are about to receive the results,” Marisa Jacott, the head of Fronteras Comunes (Common Borders), an environmental NGO, told IPS.

Fronteras Comunes and the Asociación Ecológica Santo Tomás (Santo Tomás Ecological Association) are providing legal advice to the local population, mainly small farmers and fisherfolk, who have incurred great losses due to oil spills and gas explosions.

Mexico’s 2011 Class Action Law allows individuals and the federal consumer protection agency to sue state and private companies. However, the law does not provide for reparations.

The oil industry has been active in Tabasco since the early 1950s, and expanded there from the 1970s onwards with the construction of petrochemical plants, pipeline networks and storage facilities, sparking an economic boom.

But the boom did not result in benefits for the local communities. Instead, the oil industry displaced traditional activities like banana farming and cattle ranching.

The oil industry is active in 13 of Tabasco’s 17 municipalities, producing 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) – of a national total of 2.5 million bpd – according to the Mexican Petroleum Institute (IMP).

“There is environmental pollution and crop destruction, and there are soils that have lost their fertility. This means that harvests are not as abundant as they were before,” Lorena Sánchez, head of the Tabasco Human Rights Committee (CODEHUTAB), an NGO that has received complaints from local people about these problems, told IPS.

“It has affected people’s diets and caused respiratory health problems as well as blood and skin diseases,” she said.

Since 2011, CODEHUTAB has brought four lawsuits to the federal environmental protection agency, PROFEPA, that have resulted in fines for Pemex, but not in reparations for victims in local communities.

The most recent case, this year, was related to seven gas flares burning in the municipality of Paraíso, where CODEHUTAB took blood samples from 50 children between the ages of seven and 15. Ten percent of the samples had chromosome alterations, linked by the epidemiologists to oil industry activity.

PROFEPA estimates there are an average of 20 crude spills a year in Tabasco. Between 2008 and 2012, the environment ministry recorded 102 sites contaminated by environmental emergencies in the country caused by Pemex, including three in Tabasco.

In addition to Tabasco, the eastern and southeastern states of Veracruz, Tamaulipas, Hidalgo and Puebla and the highways connecting them to Mexico City are regarded as vulnerable to oil industry activity.

The oil industry in this region produces pollution with heavy metals, ozone, sulphur dioxide, nitric oxide, volatile aromatic compounds like benzene, hydrogen sulphide, salts, ammonia, cadmium and acids, all of which are harmful to the environment and human health, the NGOs complain.

Manuel Pinkus-Rendón and Alicia Contreras, academic researchers at the Autonomous University of Yucatán, concluded in a study published last year that “the social and environmental fabric of Tabasco reflects a regional development potential considerably below that which existed over 60 years ago, as a result of environmental degradation.”

For their study “Impacto socioambiental de la industria petrolera en Tabasco: el caso de Chontalpa” (Social and environmental impact of the oil industry in Tabasco: The case of Chontalpa), the authors interviewed 200 residents of four towns in the municipality of Cárdenas, 65 percent of whom expressed negative views about oil industry activity, especially because of the pollution and destruction it causes.

“It is a case that has not been addressed. We want the judges to have the fewest possible reasons to reject it,” said Jacott, of Fronteras Comunes.

In April, the local residents presented a complaint to the National Commission on Human Rights. In 2004 they had filed a legal complaint against Pemex in the attorney general’s office, but it went nowhere.

The environmental organisations and local residents have spent two years building their case. The next step will be legal action over damage suffered in the adjacent state of Veracruz, another major oil-producing region.

“We want them to take the required preventive measures. All Pemex does is supposedly carry out remediation of the damage, but it does not invest in maintaining the pipelines and guarding the area,” CODEHUTAB’s Sánchez complained.

The organisations are asking for an assessment of the state of ecosystems in Tabasco, and the dissemination of Pemex’s policies and guidelines for preventing leaks, addressing environmental contingencies and cleaning up polluted sites.

They are also calling for the gradual replacement of fossil fuels with alternative energy sources, as well as regular measurements of the main atmospheric pollutants in affected areas.

Mauritians protest against the construction of a 100-megawatt (MW) coal power plant in Pointe-aux-Caves. They say the project will cause irreparable damage to them and the environment of this Indian Ocean island nation. Credit: Nasseem Ackbarally/IPS

By Nasseem Ackbarally
PORT-LOUIS , Apr 4 2013 (IPS)

Residents of Albion, a small village in Pointe-aux-Caves, western Mauritius, say that by opposing the construction of a new coal power plant near their homes, they are defending their constitutional right to live.

“What a catastrophe is coming to our region,” says Ed Laverdure, as he sits under the veranda of a shop in Albion less than two kilometres away from the site where CT Power (Mauritius) Ltd., the company commissioned to construct and operate the plant, is clearing the land for construction.

For the last six months, the residents of Albion and environmental activists have protested the construction of a 100-megawatt (MW) coal power plant, commissioned by the country’s Central Electricity Board (CEB). They have also petitioned the Supreme Court to halt the project that they say will cause irreparable damage to them and the environment of this Indian Ocean island nation. The court will hear their case on May. 6.

On Thursday, Apr. 4, residents took what they hoped was a significant step in halting the construction of the plant. They presented, during a hearing closed to the public, their objections about the plant to the National Energy Commission, which was set up by the government following the recent public outcry over the issue.

The commission, which comprises high-level government officials, scientists from the Mauritius Research Council and the University of Mauritius, environmentalists and trade unionists, was asked by residents of Albion to halt the project and to ensure the government moves away from using the existing four power coal power plants in the country, which were installed in the early 2000s.

“They should not be allowed to be refurbished and have their usefulness extended with new coal units. Any new power plant must be (built using) renewable energy sources,” residents said in their request.

Presently, Mauritius produces about 438 MW of power, which supplies some 420,000 consumer households and industries.

Some 22 percent of the country’s electricity comes from renewable sources such as hydro, wind and bagasse. But fossil fuel plants generate about 50 percent of all electricity produced locally, with coal plants accounting for 30 percent. According to the CEB, Mauritius needs an additional 100 MW of electricity by 2015 to prevent a power shortage in this country of 1.3 million people.

Environmental engineer Vassen Kauppaymuthoo tells IPS that the impact the plant will have on the population will be significant.

“The environment, the economy and even the social life on the island will be affected,” he says. “About 1,600 tonnes of coal will be transported daily by road from the port to the plant causing: traffic jams and pollution on the road, ash emissions, the release of heavy metals in the air, and contamination of the underground water if the ash is not buried with great care in the soil.

“The sea nearby (will be polluted) and 900 grammes of carbon dioxide for every kilowatt of electricity produced will be released. These are just a few of the consequences,” Kauppaymuthoo adds.

Keshwar Beeharry-Panray, an ecologist and chief executive officer of Environment Protection and Conservation Organisation, an environmental and conservation NGO, says that residents could face serious health risks, including developing respiratory problems such as asthma, and skin rashes.

Beeharry-Panray questions what type of technology will be used at the new coal plant.

“Everybody knows that modern technology to reduce pollution to the maximum is very costly. Will (CT Power) invest in it? Not sure. They (power companies) always say that they’ll take care of the pollution, but when it comes to real implementation, nothing happens and even the authorities forget about it,” he says, questioning whether the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development is equipped to monitor the activities of the operating power companies.

The CEB states on its website that due to restructuring and privatisation, it produces 40 percent of the country’s power, with the remainder being produced by independent companies.

But according to the CEB, Mauritius has limited known exploitable energy sources.

“If this new project is not realised, we will have to use more oil to produce electricity. We need 100 MW of additional electricity very fast because what is most important of all is that the population should get their electricity,” Shiam Thannoo, general manager of the CEB, tells IPS.

He observes that there is a limit to using renewable energy, as the high investment costs are the main obstacle. However, the CEB is planning to construct one 20-MW wind power plant every three years starting from 2017, and one 10-MW solar plant every three years from 2013.

But Suttyhudeo Tengur, director of the NGO Association for the Promotion of the Environment and Consumers, believes a small island like Mauritius has no choice but to use thermal power as only oil and coal are readily available here, which “unfortunately pollute the environment and affect our health…”

Though Khalil Elahee, director of the government’s Energy Efficiency Management Office, points out that the current growth in energy demand is low. He says demand grew by two percent in 2012 compared to a growth of 10 percent in 1980.

“This is due to the evolution of the economy and the fact that the main old pillars like the textile and sugar industries were huge consumers of electricity. Today, the services sector, which is expanding, uses less energy,” he tells IPS.

Meanwhile, Laverdure tells IPS that he and his family want to leave Albion, but cannot. “Who’ll buy my house in which I have invested my savings and am still paying for the bank loan?”

He says that if all the demonstrations, petitions and protests against the construction of the plant do not succeed, he will have to live next to it forever.

“Our kids also,” adds his friend, who only wants to be referred to as Georges.

“We’ll also have to forget about our blue lagoon nearby because of the pollution,” claims Laverdure.

Green taxes could finance wind parks, like this one in the southern state of Oaxaca. Credit: Mauricio Ramos /IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Mar 14 2013 (IPS)

As the Mexican government prepares a broad tax reform bill, experts and activists see it as an opportunity to include new “green taxes” aimed at raising funds for curbing pollution.

Fuel consumption, the manufacturing of automobiles and fertiliser, and mining could be among the areas subject to new environmental taxes under the reform.

But the business community has already protested eventual new green taxes.

“Taxes are a means of getting prices of merchandise to reflect the real economic, environmental and social value of resources. They seek to modify conditions of consumption, reduce emissions, and improve the environment,” academic Karina Caballero told IPS.

“Gradually increasing taxes can be applied,” said Caballero, a professor in the economics department of the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM).

Caballero studied fuel taxes in this country and found that the more income people have, the more gasoline they use, in general. Moreover, she reported that price hikes do not significantly dampen demand.

She also said the highest income segments of the population consume more fuel and spend more on transportation than lower income segments.

The introduction of so-called green or environmental taxes picked up speed in the 1990s, especially in industrialised nations like Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden, which tax vehicles and energy products that emit carbon dioxide (CO2), produce toxic waste, or have impacts on water sources.

Green taxes are aimed at reducing environmental damage and curtailing the effects of pollution by earmarking the revenue for conservation efforts, more green-friendly consumption, or the generation of more environmentally efficient technologies.

In Latin America, Brazil adopted a tax in 1988 on the circulation of merchandise and inter-state and inter-municipal transportation service and communication providers, which taxes consumption of goods and services. A greater share of the revenue goes to those municipalities and states that do the most to protect the environment.

Costa Rica, for its part, dedicates 33.5 percent of its fuel tax to conservation activities.

On average, the countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a group of industrialised nations including Mexico, levy eight environmental taxes.

The OECD reported that the revenue from green taxes represented around seven percent of the total tax revenue of its 34 member countries between 1994 and 2007.

“The reform is a good chance to apply green taxes, which can have positive environmental and social effects,” economist Mauricio González, director of the graduate school of business administration and management at the private Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, told IPS.

When conservative President Enrique Peña Nieto took office in December, he pledged to overhaul Mexico’s tax system, to make it more fair and simple, increase revenue, boost economic growth, and increase funds for social sectors like health and education.

The bill will be negotiated in Congress this year, with the aim of putting it into effect in 2014.

Under the reform, food and medicine would no longer be exempt from the Value Added Tax, which currently stands at 16 percent.

Mexico’s overall taxation rate is 19 percent, one of the lowest in Latin America.

A high-level government source told IPS that there was no specific green tax proposal to add to the reform bill as yet. But the source said new environmentally-related taxes may be included, or existing ones may be raised.

The green taxes that are currently levied do not surpass one percentage point of Mexico’s GDP, according to OECD statistics, while the average in the bloc is seven percentage points.

“In Mexico, environmental fiscal policy is in diapers,” says the study “Public finance and the environment” produced in 2010 by the Centre for Public Finance Studies of the Mexican Congress.

“The possibility of implementing a reform of this kind has not been thoroughly analysed, and the existing taxes appear to be vague when it comes to the environment,” it concludes.

In Mexico there are taxes on new cars, and on the production of diesel, natural gas used in transport and gasoline. But within the OECD, Mexico is the country with the lowest taxes on fuel.

On the other hand, subsidies for gasoline, electricity and household gas exceed 23 billion dollars, according to experts and environmental organisations.

Environmental groups have so far set forth nine specific proposals for new environmental taxes. They also insist that fuel subsidies should be phased out, arguing that they are inequitable, inefficient and environmentally costly.

In 2005, Carlos Muñoz and Sara Ávila of the governmental National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change (INECC) proposed establishing a graduated scale of taxes from zero to 15 percent for pesticides, depending on level of toxicity, or a single 10 percent tax only for the most toxic pesticides.

Their study, “The effects of an environmental tax on pesticides in Mexico”, published in the magazine Gaceta Ecológica, concluded that the chemical industry would not lose revenue and consumers of agricultural products would absorb the price hikes.

Another study, “Agricultural pollution and costs in irrigation district 011, Guanajuato”, led by Rosario Pérez of UNAM’s Economic Research Institute, found that a 100 percent tax on methyl parathion, a highly toxic insecticide, would cut its use in half and reduce the earnings of its producers by less than one percent.

“The costs of water and insecticides represent a small percentage of the total cost, due to subsidies, which stimulate the over-use of these inputs. The cost of polluting and over-exploiting water and the soil is practically zero,” says the study published in the Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas (Mexican Journal of Agricultural Sciences) in August 2011.

But business leaders are far from accepting environmental taxes.

“We have to be careful about these issues…they must not affect the country’s competitiveness. Mexico cannot take vanguard positions,” and do so on its own, the chairman of the energy commission of the Confederation of Industrial Chambers, Régulo Salinas, told IPS.

“Taxes can be levied on electricity, gas and water,” said Caballero. “But you have to compensate the social impact, by means of benefits that target the lowest income sectors, like a transport subsidy.”

Paediatricians in Argentina are working to protect the environment in order to provide better child healthcare. Credit: Malena Bystrowicz/IPS

By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Jan 4 2013 (IPS)

A group of Argentine paediatricians has been combining work on environmental protection and child health for more than 10 years. It appears a basic principle to apply, but the task is turning out to be increasingly challenging and complex.

“We can’t clean up a river, or give a family a new house, but we can teach people to put chlorine in the water,” Dr. Stella Maris Gil, the coordinator of the Environmental Paediatric Unit (UPA) at the Pedro de Elizalde Children’s Hospital in the Constitución neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, told IPS.

The UPA provides health care with a strong environmental component, educates the public using the hospital, trains doctors and carries out research, explained Gil and other paediatricians belonging to the unit.

“The idea arose in the 2001 crisis,” Gil said, referring to the economic and social collapse at the end of that year, when poverty and unemployment reached unprecedented levels in Argentina and also had an impact on health.

“We were seeing a lot of illness connected to poor living conditions: respiratory diseases, gastroenteritis, skin infections … So we decided to give courses on the impact of environmental pollution on health, and we devised a project aimed at protecting the environment in order to provide better health care for children,” she said.

The project, which gave rise to the UPA, had a healthcare component “with strong environmental awareness,” Gil said, “and also a component for educating the public, another for training our colleagues and ourselves, and one for researching environmental topics.”

The hospital authorities accepted the proposal, and in 2005 it was adopted by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. The first UPA was created, and the model was later reproduced in other hospitals in different parts of the country.

At first, colleagues looked askance at members of the unit, but as information about climate change spread, they began to treat the unit members with growing respect and consult them for advice.

This type of unit exists in other countries, like the United States, Canada, Mexico and Spain. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends formation of the units to focus the attention of health professionals on the stage of life that is most vulnerable to the effects of pollution.

The paediatricians are motivated by the concept that children “are not just small adults.” Their organs are in the process of developing, and their physiological and metabolic systems are immature. This is even truer of foetuses in the womb, where damage can be irreversible or fatal, the experts warn.

As well as seeing patients and acting as consultants when doctors suspect disease or symptoms of exposure to pollution, the UPA paediatricians spend a lot of time working with families on preventive health care.

“Doctors are trained to work with illness, but the main thing is prevention,” said another of the doctors on the team, Graciela Masu. “In recent years there has been a change in attitudes; previously, medicine was regarded as identical to health,” she said.

The UPA holds workshops to train colleagues; gives talks to family members in the waiting room while they wait for their children to be seen; and promotes projects like replacing mercury thermometers or limiting prescriptions of examinations that involve exposing patients to radiation.

Mercury thermometers are extremely polluting if they break. The campaign led to their replacement, first in the hospital, and then in other clinics and hospitals. The city government no longer purchases them, Masu said. However, achieving change is not always a simple matter.

“In our role as doctors, we can advise mothers about the best living conditions for their children’s development, about the importance of hygiene, of not smoking, of clean water tanks, about consumption and waste disposal,” Masu said.

“We don’t concern ourselves with eradicating waste dumps because that is not something we are responsible for. What we try to do is to improve the interior environment,” she said.

Another important campaign they carried out was aimed at limiting the use of ionising radiation, which is used in X-rays, radioscopy and tomography. “Children are more vulnerable to this radiation, which can leave them more prone to developing leukaemia or thyroid cancer,” Gil said.

She said medicine cannot do without these diagnostic tools, but it is necessary to raise awareness about “the rational and justified use” of these tests in the fields of neonatology or paediatrics.

They are also campaigning about the effects of ultraviolet radiation, a key issue in a country that is affected by the thinning of the ozone layer, which allows harmful radiation from the sun to reach the earth’s surface, causing skin damage if proper protective measures are not taken, particularly in young children.

But the pollutant that causes most concern is tobacco smoke, which pollutes air inside homes and causes respiratory illnesses in children. “Cigarettes are the greatest scourge because they result in premature births, low birth weight and infant mortality,” said Gil.

Then there is the issue of managing waste, which in shantytowns piles up in the open and pollutes air, soil and groundwater; and pesticide use. “We see a lot of parasitic diseases, infections, and vector-borne illnesses like dengue or hantavirus,” one of the doctors says.

More serious diseases make up a smaller proportion. “It’s not always possible to relate a serious disease to pollution, although it often is possible to find traces of lead, benzene and other chemicals in blood, urine or hair. But in order to find them, we have to look for them,” she said.

Gil said that threshold levels of particular pollutants used to be tolerated, but nowadays the view in paediatrics is that any exposure may have short, medium or long term effects. At present the hospital has seven cases of gastroschisis, a congenital defect of the abdominal wall, which is being seen more frequently than a few years ago, she said, and may be related to maternal exposure to pollutants during pregnancy.

Gil said the UPA relies heavily on the work of the toxicology department, which advises on requesting complementary tests based on particular symptoms or suspicions.

Yet another problem linked to the environment and living conditions is alcohol and drug abuse among pregnant teenagers, which exposes both mother and child to risks in their future development.