Saare jahan se Nchha: Bhopal Disaster

Note: Indeed the people from Bhopal and their supporters who are on the pavements of Jantar Mantar, New Delhi since 28th February, 2008 are fighting for a cause much larger than their own.

The victims of December 2, 1984 world's worst industrial genocide ever merits active support of all sections of society because in someways we all live in Bhopal.

Besides inheriting the liabilities of Union Carbide Company, Dow Chemicals Company is guilty of having bribed Rs 80 lakh to Indian agriculture ministry officials to expedite registration of three pesticides — Dursban (also called chlorpyriphos), Nurelle and Pride. In February 2007, US financial regulator, the Securities Exchange Commission fined Dow $325,000 for the same. Failure in taking action against the guilty officials by Dr Manmohan Singh and Sharad Pawar tantamoounts to complicity. Does any one know the names of these officials?

It is disgusting to note that these illegally registered pesticides are still being sold freely in India although Dursban has been withdrawn in the US since 2000 to minimise potential health risks from exposure for all US citizens, especially children. But in India, the illegally registered pesticides are poisoning children, and those guilty are roaming free.

On 21st May, 2008 Bhopal gas leak survivors, including children and women, chained themselves to the railings around the Prime Minister’s residence demanding speedy resolution of their demands.

The survivors were demanding legal action against Union Carbide and Dow Chemicals. They want an empowered Special Commission set up to oversee the rehabilitation of gas victims. Survivors of the 1984 gas tragedy and victims of water contamination have been on a dharna in New Delhi for the past 55 days seeking an audience with Dr Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister. The protesters accused the Prime Minister of being “insensitive” to the plight of the victims, who include a large number of women and children. In April 2006, the Prime Minister met a delegation of victims and promised to do all that was within his powers.

Likes of Ram Vilas Paswan, the Union Minister for Chemicals deserve appreciation for demanding Rs 100 crore from Dow as an advance to cover costs of environmental remediation at Carbide’s Bhopal site through an application in the Madhya Pradesh High Court.

Abhiskhekh Manu Singhvi, a Member of Parliament and spokesperson for Congress party has been hired by Dow as their lawyer. By any stretch of imagination, can one condone and ignore such blatant conflict of interest?

Instead of taking action against Union Carbide and Dow Chemicals, the COngress-led United Progressive government of Sonia Gandhi is promoting their investment in India and shielding the companies by providing the legal services of Dr Singhvi and others.

Moderator


Saare jahan se Nchha


Hindustan Times, Edit Page


For those passing by 7 Race Course Road on Wednesday, a wet day in the
national capital, a strange scene may have greeted them outside the
Prime Minister's residence. People had chained themselves to the
railings of the perimeter gate of the PM's residence and before too
long, were hauled into police vans by the dozen. Who were these
people? And why were they there on such an unnaturally cool summer day
with freshness in the air? These people were survivors and victims of
the Bhopal Gas `tragedy' protesting against the cacophonous silence on
their two-point charter they have demanded from the man who lives
inside the premises they were gathered outside.

These people had walked 800 kilometres from Bhopal to reach New Delhi
in late March and are still on dharna at Jantar Mantar. But more than
the distance, it is the matter of time — nearly quarter of a century —
that has worn them down, that has made them tired. Their charter asks
for two things: one, that a special commission be set up to
rehabilitate families of gas tragedy survivors and those affected by
the contaminated water in Bhopal; two, that the Government of India
pursue legal action against Union Carbide and Dow Chemical. Just in
case the government gets too nervous, compensation doesn't even figure
in the list of demands of these people.

A special commission, they say, is the only mechanism that can ensure
the implementation of assurances of successive PMs that rehabilitation
will be done. The fact that the plight of the survivors has gone from
bad to worse over the last 24 years is proof enough that previous
attempts to coordinate rehabilitation measures — through a Group of
Ministers on Bhopal and, since 2006, by a Coordination Committee —
have failed.

Legal action against Dow and Union Carbide is necessary not just for
closure for those bereaved and hurt by the gas and poisoned
groundwater. Survivors say that is the only way to ensure that future
`Bhopals' are not repeated elsewhere. But what has the government done
to hold the guilty accountable? Nothing. Union Carbide and its former
chairperson Warren Anderson, both of whom face charges of culpable
homicide and grievous assault, are absconding from Indian courts since
1992. No fresh attempts have been made by the government to enforce
their appearance in court.

Unrelated to the gas disaster, but arising from the routine operation
of a poorly maintained chemical factory, Union Carbide has also
created environmental liabilities for itself — involving the clean-up
of toxic wastes and contaminated groundwater, and compensating people
hurt by the consumption of the poisoned water. By virtue of its
acquisition of Union Carbide in 2001, Dow Chemical has inherited
Carbide's civil liabilities — of clean-up and compensation for
water-affected people. Also, in acquiring Union Carbide, Dow was well
aware that it was inheriting an absconder. While Dow cannot be held
responsible for the original crime of causing the disaster, it is
guilty of harbouring an absconder — an offence under Section 212 of
the Indian Penal Code.

In April 2006, when the survivors and victims of Bhopal met Manmohan
Singh after a 35-day walk, 15-day sit-in and a six-day hungerstrike,
the PM promised to explore all options within law to hold Carbide and
Dow accountable. Barely a few months later, the Union Commerce
Ministry approved collaboration between Reliance and Dow for the
transfer of Union Carbide-owned and patented technology. A
900,000-tonne per year polypropylene plant being built by Reliance in
its Jamnagar Special Economic Zone will use Carbide's Unipol PP
technology, catalysts and process software. This is illegal. Union
Carbide's assets in India are subject to confiscation as per the 1992
order of the Bhopal magistrate. In 2005, Indian Oil was forced to
scrap a deal with Dow involving the Carbide-owned `METEOR' technology.
Dow had falsely claimed that the technology to be licensed was its own
and not Carbide's in order to avoid questions about the latter's
absconder status.

Why would the Government of India go out on a limb to help Dow Chemical? A note forwarded by Planning Commission Deputy Chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has the answer. The approval, the note says, “was greatly appreciated [by Dow] as a signal that Dow was not blacklisted as an investor”.

Dow’s jitters began when the Ministry of Chemical filed an application in the Madhya Pradesh High Court demanding Rs 100 crore from Dow as an advance to cover costs of environmental remediation at Carbide’s Bhopal site. In 2005, Dow began a lobbying operation that roped in the support of a veritable list of influential people in the Government. Indian Ambassador to the US Ronen Sen, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, Commerce Minister Kamal Nath, Ratan Tata and the then Cabinet Secretary B.K. Chaturvedi were soon singing Dow’s tune — that any overtures to hold Dow liable for Bhopal-related issues will scare away Dow’s promised $1 billion investment in India and also discourage other American investors. Once again, issues of investment are clouding issues of justice.

Dow’s crimes in India do not arise only from its association with Union Carbide. In February 2007, US financial regulator, the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) fined Dow $325,000. The reason: Dow had paid Rs 80 lakh as a bribe to Indian agriculture ministry officials to expedite registration of three pesticides — Dursban, Nurelle and Pride. Talking to faculty members in IIT-Bombay, Dow India CEO and old Carbide hand Ramesh Ramachandran blamed the bribery scandal on its employees. Dow, he said, took pro-active action against the errant officials. But what he did not mention was that Dow had approved this expenditure in its submission to the SEC. Even worse, the illegally registered products are still being sold freely in India.

In 2000, Dursban was withdrawn from all home and garden products in the US. Announcing this, US Environmental Protection Agency chief Carol Browner declared that this action came after “completing the most extensive scientific review of the potential hazards from a pesticide ever conducted. This action, the result of an agreement with the manufacturers, will significantly minimise potential health risks from exposure to Dursban, also called chlorpyriphos, for all Americans, especially children.”

Responding to a question about the bribery in Parliament, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said in May 2007 that a CBI probe was underway. The probe is concluded. But the report is gathering dust. In the meantime, the illegally registered pesticides are poisoning our children, and those guilty are roaming free.

In demanding that the Dow-Reliance deal is revoked, and that the illegal registration for the pesticides be withdrawn, the people from Bhopal you may have seen outside the Prime Minister’s house on Wednesday are fighting for a cause much larger than their own.


May 22, 2008

Nityanand Jayaraman

The author is a Chennai-based independent journalist and researcher.

http://hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=0d2a47c4-4715-4646-a481-e33c79a5d932&&Headline=Saare+jahan+se+Nchha

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Ten Urgent Matters for life and livelihoods on earth

Civil Society at the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity:

Ten Urgent Matters for life and livelihoods on earth

May 12 – 30, 2008, Bonn, Germany


The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Alliance has launched a media advisory highlighting ten of civil society’s most pressing concerns to be discussed at the upcoming Convention on Biological Diversity. Almost all of the world’s governments will gather in Bonn, Germany to debate, negotiate, and hopefully take decisive action for life – both human and non-human – on earth.


The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is the leading United Nations agreement for ecological governance, covering many areas of environmental, economic and social policy, involving thousands of participants and producing large amounts of policies, guidelines and international law.


The media advisory, which can be viewed and downloaded at http://undercovercop.org/media/ intends to cut through the jargon of the official CBD process and to highlight what many civil society groups believe will be the key fights at the Bonn negotiations this month.


“The CBD process produces large amounts of written information that is not readily accessible to the average layperson and negotiations are often difficult to follow,” explains Jessica Dempsey, co-ordinator of the CBD Alliance. “Civil society organizations – including nongovernmental organizations, Indigenous organizations, local communities, and social movements – play a crucial role at the CBD in highlighting the biggest threats and the most urgent issues that governments need to address,” she continued.


Civil society brings expertise and voices of those who are not always represented at intergovernmental conferences, voices with stories to tell about ecological devastation, corporate theft, wrong-headed governmental policies, and the spiraling decline of both cultural and biological diversity. Hundreds of civil society groups from the Global South and the North will be present in Germany to ensure negotiators face up to some of the most pressing issues for the equitable and socially just survival of life on this planet.


The loss of biological diversity and climate change require strong, global, and collective action. Any solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss must be complementary, not undermine each other. Any solutions must put the knowledge and rights of those most impacted at its core: Indigenous peoples, local communities, including family farmers, fisherfolk, peasants, pastoralists and others.


Some of the major concerns of civil society identified by some members of the CBD alliance are:

[1]Food, hunger and agricultural biodiversity, [2] Bad agrofuel energy, [3]Forest biological diversity, [4] Genetically engineered trees, [5] Damaging climate techno-fixes, [6] Ecosystem approach, [7] Ownership of life, [8] Protected Areas, [9] Compensation for victims of genetic contamination, and [10] Invasive species. For a short background on each of these areas see the notes below.


More detailed information on each of these issues, from the perspective of many civil society groups is found within the media advisory (posted at http://undercovercop.org/media/). These media briefs have been assembled through contributions of 30 civil society organizations and networks worldwide in a process facilitated by the CBD Alliance (www.cbdalliance.org). These briefings are not representative of all civil society positions around the Convention on Biological Diversity. We encourage media to seek out particular individuals and actors for their own views as the negotiations advance. Those seeking an on-the-ground contact in Bonn can find contacts for each issue at the end of each briefing page.
Civil society groups will hold preparatory meetings on the 17th and 18th of May, and will announce the outcomes of these meetings and expectations for COP 9 on 19 May, at 09:30 in the morning. The conference will be held in the official COP9/MOP4 Press Centre.
Finally, civil society groups will use a variety of means to update the world on the progress (or lack of) at the negotiations. Many updates, including the daily newsletter published by the civil society community (the “ECO”), will be posted on www.undercoverCOP.org.
Contact: Jessica Dempsey, CBD Alliance, Email or by phone in Bonn at 0049 176 8505 5783.
Orin Langelle, Global Justice Ecology Project, Email: or by phone at 0049 176 7718 7583.
Notes:



[1] Food, hunger and agricultural biodiversity: The capacity of the world to feed itself depends on sustaining agricultural biodiversity – diverse, and locally controlled seeds, crops, livestock, fisheries and productive ecosystems. The CBD should layout a new path for agriculture, livestock and fisheries in the 21st century, with food sovereignty at its core. Two thirds of current OECD agricultural subsidies are destroying biodiversity and must be cancelled.


[2] Bad “agrofuel” energy: The subsidies and runaway development of the agrofuels industry is fuelling speculation in commodity futures markets and land, so driving food prices, hunger and the destruction of ecosystems and communities. The CBD must act to halt the damage and call for the control of markets in agricultural commodities for food, feed and agrofuels.


[3] Forest biological diversity: Forests are being destroyed at an alarming rate and many legally binding CBD commitments are not implemented on the ground. The CBD must identify and quash perverse economic incentives that lead to deforestation, make real commitments to combating illegal and unsustainable logging, and reject socially and environmentally destructive tree monoculture (plantations). The CBD must promote a systemic approach to forest biological diversity that has, at its core, the rights and interests of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and ensure their full and effective participation in all negotiations concerning their lands and ecosystems, including the international climate negotiations.

[4] Genetically engineered trees: The release of genetically engineered (GE) trees poses an unprecedented threat to global forest ecosystems and forest biodiversity. Escape of GE trees and their traits into forests would be irreversible. The CBD must put an immediate global stop to the release of genetically engineered trees into the environment.


[5] Damaging climate techno-fixes: Profiteering companies are promoting extreme technological solutions to climate change such as seeding the oceans with iron – known as geo-engineering. Ocean fertilization is not proven to reduce climate-changing gases in the atmosphere and may cause major changes to marine ecosystems – altering food webs, creating toxic tides or deoxygenated seas – changes that could, in some cases, be irreversible. The CBD must stop these before they worsen ecological destruction.


[6] Ecosystem approach: The Ecosystem Approach has the potential to transform our efforts to conserve and sustainably use biological diversity. The CBD must ensure Indigenous Peoples and local communities are central to the Ecosystem Approach, or else it will fail, taking with it one of the few opportunities to pull the world's ecosystems back from the brink.

[7] Ownership of life: The genes, seeds, organisms and knowledge that the worlds poor depend on are being stolen, privatized and often patented. The new "access and benefit sharing" rules being decided at the CBD must prevent, not facilitate such theft, and be based upon the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

[8] Protected Areas: The global network of protected areas to be attained by 2010 on land and by 2012 on sea is one of the tools to reduce biodiversity loss. So far both terrestrial and marine ecosystem protection has not been realized. The broadening of protected areas governance types is critical to the expansion of protected areas systems, and Parties must fully recognize and respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in protected area policies, programmes and projects, and ensure their full and effective participation.

[9] Compensation for victims of genetic contamination: Not every country or community accepts the risks of genetically engineered organisms. Who should be liable and accountable for unwelcome contamination of genetically engineered organisms, or their health or socioeconomic impacts? The COP must develop a strong agreement that would leave no victim of contamination uncompensated.


[10] Invasive species: Invasive species are one of the biggest threats to biological diversity, often transported through international trade and travel. The CBD must take strong action to block the pathways for their movement and turn the tide of alien invasions.
PLEASE NOTE: The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Alliance is a loose network of civil society representatives. The CBD Alliance facilitated the development of these media briefings, to which some thirty organisations from North and global South contributed. The briefings should not be understood as the views of the CBD Alliance, nor of civil society in general, but as background information on some CBD issues from the views of some civil society representatives. For more information see www.cbdalliance.org

Source: Press Release 13 May 2008

For more information visit:

www.cbdalliance.org

Check out www.undercovercop.org starting on 15 May to follow negotiations at COP 9...

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Bhopal clean-up

The most urgent task is to secure the waste

The question is not whether the contamination in Bhopal should be cleaned up first and liability pinned later, or if the clean-up should await identification of who should pay.

The relevant question is whether the clean-up can be done thoroughly by the Indian government or Indian companies, and whether it can be ensured that thoroughness is not sacrificed on the pretext of urgency. Fact is Indian agencies lack the experience and the technical wherewithal to deal with the highly toxic wastes abandoned by Carbide.

In June 2005, M/s Ramky Pharma City was engaged to contain pesticide wastes stored onsite. The botched up containment sent clouds of pesticide dust into surrounding communities. More than 130 residents, who developed symptoms after exposure to the dust, had to be hospitalised.

Again, on April 3 this year, a waste facility — touted as a state-of-the-art incinerator — identified by the MP High Court to receive 346 tonnes of highly toxic Bhopal wastes exploded, gutting a shed and burning 250 tonnes of stored wastes.

This facility is in Ankleshwar — a toxic hotspot in its own right, and desperately in need of a clean-up. An Ankleshwar resident’s attempts to raise concerns about the unit’s capacity to handle the wastes were thwarted after the Court said it was too late to hear these matters.

The 346 tonnes that is sought to be disposed is a red herring. The real threat is the 10,000 tonnes of wastes, buried in and around the factory. No urgency has been shown in tackling these wastes. For this, a comprehensive study of depth and spread of contaminants is the first step.

An environmental impact assessment — of the clean-up exercise — and a management plan to mitigate pollution during clean-up is the second.
Resolving liability issues and the remediation exercise can proceed simultaneously. The question of who should pay — the taxpayer or the polluter — should not occupy the Court’s time for too long if it takes up the matter in right earnest.

In our opinion the most urgent task for the Court and the government is to secure the exposed and buried waste from the ensuing rains and prevent yet another flood of contaminated water this year submerging the neighbourhood communities.


Satinath Sarangi

Member, Bhopal Group for Information Action

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Toxic Chemicals Are Maiming Thousands Around the World

I don't know how anyone survives there.

My first visit to the SIPCOT Chemicals Hub in Cuddalore, India could have appeared deceptively pleasant to outside eyes. It's a beautiful day and there's a good breeze as we drive past the welcome sign for SIPCOT. The air in some places seems far cleaner than the air in nearby Chennai. In some spots it smells sweet, in others, like opening a bottle of ibuprofen -- an antiseptic, medicinal smell.

That is until my throat gets sore, I feel a bit nauseated and my guide starts retching. My guide, a local community environmental monitor finally recovers with bloodshot eyes. A headache follows and I begin to wonder how anyone manages to work in these facilities. SIPCOT Chemical Hub sandwiches its picturesque fishing villages in between rusting hulks of chemical factories. The court ordered waste channels are overflowing with an eerily pale blue green liquid, cattle graze not far away.

I visited the Cuddalore chemical hub, 2.5 hours south of Chennai on my most recent trip to India this January. I was in India to meet with the survivors of the world's worst industrial disaster, in which more than 8,000 people were gassed to death nearly overnight in 1984 by a Union Carbide chemical leak. Water contamination and long term effects of the toxic gas have killed 15,000 more since that December night. Cuddalore is a case study of how growing chemicals manufacture in the Global South for western and local markets is setting the stage for future Bhopals. While major consumer markets from New Delhi to New York rely on chemical manufacturing from impoverished communities in the Global South, toxics come back concentrated in products and food produced in the same impoverished communities.

The SIPCOT Chemicals Hub is currently an 8km stretch of pharmaceutical, explosive, dye and pesticide manufacturers. If it is completed as planned, it will stretch more than 38 kilometers, possibly trapping thousands of people on a strip of land between the Kaveri River and the sea that is less than 1km wide. One of my guides, Center for Environmental Monitoring organizer Shweta Narayan, works to keep this already toxic hotspot from reaching the boiling point and to help protect the local population from further egregious harm.

What might be a one-time chemical exposure for a healthy visitor, is a daily sensitization to highly toxic pollutants for the people living nearby. The villagers fish the polluted waters, and breathe belches of black and yellow smoke that smell like pickled cabbage, rotting carcass, sulfur gas or pesticides depending on the factory.

Victory Chemicals is making its toxic and likely radioactive sludge into bricks to give to villagers. But they doesn't find many takers. The bricks now lie dumped near the riverbank, crumbling into the water and from there into the body of a plant, a fish, a human being. Factory workers come out and stand close to the car, arms crossed, hoping harsh stares will generate enough force to push our concern out of the way. The District Environmental Engineer is called. He tries to blow off the claim that the waste is toxic. When that fails, he shrilly professes total impotence to address contamination complaints, before issuing a command for clean up; which all present know is destined to be ignored.

Over time, the body loses its ability to cope with these chemicals designed to confound our natural systems, and each exposure gives a more and more severe effect.

A chemical that will have no visible effect on an adult, can have catastrophic effects on the developing fetus and the young child -- dulling the mind, triggering birth defects, and setting the stage for autism, asthma, allergies and cancer. What may only make an adult nauseated, will cripple the dreams of a child and of a family for a healthy future; a whole and better life.

In the U.S., epidemics of cancer, autism, asthma, and reproductive birth defects in baby boys are sky high. Yet the air quality is far better in the U.S. than in most Indian cities. In India garbage piles are burnt spewing whole incinerator's worth of dioxin into the common air. Americans benefit from better environmental standards and enforcement for vehicle and factory emissions. Both India and U.S. have addressed the air quality problems of their cities -- particularly the places where the well-to-do live -- by exporting the sources of pollution -- Texas; Louisiana; Gary, Indiana; and the Port of Los Angeles are cases in point. The urban poor in either country would recognize these lit up refineries, chemical factories and power plants through the stinging fog.

Childhood cancer increased .6% a year from 1975-2002 according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. One in almost 7 women will suffer from breast cancer in their lifetimes; hormonally active toxins may be determining cancer outcomes for our children before they are even born.

We are just starting to see public discussion of the science of how certain chemicals attach to our DNA and are passed down from generation to generation. No longer is our chemical inheritance limited to in utero exposure and breast milk -- fathers are now known to contribute the effects of their chemical exposures as well. This widespread low level toxic contamination has been building its biological trap for more than four generations. In the U.S. and U.K., one in 250 boys is born with a malformed penis; one in 200 with autism.

In a U.K. city the size of Chennai, that would be 208 little boys that will need corrective surgery shortly after birth. But in Chennai, many would never be able to afford it. It would be about 250 little autistic boys who will appear normal at birth, but may never learn to speak, to read, or to use the toilet.

SIPCOT's pollution could well affect your children and grandchildren. Who eats this fish caught in Cuddalore? I would guess that Chennai is one of the markets, and the best fish likely end up in markets in Delhi and London. The chemicals SIPCOT is choking on, or the chemicals from hubs just like it around the world, find their way to you -- though your food, settling on crops and concentrating in the dark tissue in fish.

This horror of low-level maiming is the cause for my wonderment, "How will my friends in the villages surrounding SIPCOT survive?" An enthusiastic community activist Arul Selvam informed us that SIPCOT was founded in 1984. Only 2 generations have been exposed to this growing stench so far. The teachers report that the children are far slower than in other schools; many chemicals used here are known to stunt mental growth, including those emited from a factory adjacent to the school. How can the grassroots organize when their very minds are being altered? There is no other option.

We, those who consume the products from the chemical hubs, must fight the polluters in solidarity with those most affected. We can change our own habits to cut off the market for toxic products at the ankles. But even after undertaking this, we cannot simply abandon the children in chemical hubs like SIPCOT -- our future leaders -- to the excruciating pain of cancer death, the stabbing humiliation from learning disabilities and the resulting teasing, the grief of being deprived the opportunity to become a mother or father.

The idea of detox medicine and facilities for SIPCOT's poisoned residents could be called a pipe dream. Industrial poisoning is an abandoned step child of modern medicine. Those who strive to treat poisoning with environmental medicine, ayurveda, Chinese traditional medicine, yoga, nutritional changes and support are scorned by the medical establishment. Treatment for basic poisoning is denied in this way to the wealthiest clients of the American medical system. Those who are poisoned are too frequently sacrificed at the altar of medical ego. Worse, basic medical care is beyond the reach of so many around SIPCOT, and around the world. Access to medical care declines along with income for the poisoned fisherfolk. What can we hope to offer?

The Sambhanva Clinic in Bhopal, India has found yoga positions and organic herb growing at home, offer relief to Bhopal gas and water poisoning victims. One of the reasons these techniques are threatening to conventional physicians is their very accessibility for all, their inexpensive and therefore unprofitable nature. Integrated medical treatment of industrial poisoning? There are many such good ideas, many shoulds, woulds and coulds that can turn one poisoned person's hell into a renewed hope for life. Those who chose to take the first step and act in support of the SIPCOT communities -- like the members of Youth for Social Change in Madras, are working an invisible magic, setting the stage for larger changes.

I dream not only of stopping the expansion of SIPCOT and its current polluters, but also of seeing effective treatment for those already poisoned there. Like any other daunting challenge, it can be simplified to the happiness you are creating in one other person's life and also your own. The beneficiary of this work I imagine, is a child who can smile without a cleft lip, a mother who can breathe enough to complete her daily work, a father who is proudly able to conceive. When I speak about other Bhopals and the ongoing chemical experiment we are all part of, I will describe this perfectly normal child -- a dream, a vision, and decreasing probability.

Currently exposure to extremely common chemicals, like 2,4 D -- found in Scott's Weed n' Feed, has no long term treatment protocol in the U.S. Those suffering from long term effects of toxic exposure must plow through a revolving door of specialists and disparate alternative medical practicioners spending thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours chasing relief. If environmental physicians coordinated with integrative medicine practitioners to share knowledge and treatment protocols internationally perhaps simple detox practices could be made available in SIPCOT and hundreds of communities like it.

It may take 20 years for such a vision to materialize. I hope it will take less time to see real pollution control implemented in Cuddalore. In standing up against toxic trespass, the imposition of unwanted chemicals unto our bodies, local organizers are working for the fundamental right to health and for the smile of a perfectly normal, healthy child.

By Aquene Freechild, Environmental Health Fund

Source: http://www.alternet.org/story/85630/

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Coca Cola causes Water Poverty

Note: Co-option of corporate media and gullible NGOs to support multinational enterprises of companies like Coca-Cola is happening in a context where the privatisation of the Indian state is complete.

Accusing Coca Cola beverage company of recharging groundwater is like alleging that the products of tobacco and asbestos companies have medicinal value.

It is another matter that when a company's sale equals the GDP of some 148 countries, the propaganda machine never stops and many a they commit even murders with impunity. People who remain passive to corporate atrocities when almost all seemingly sane voices and institutions become purchasable commodities create a situation invite misery of all ilk.

NGOs like TERI and WWF must review their engagements with entities like Coca Cola even if it means refusing to take their fiscal support, sponsorship and advertisements. Dr Sudhirenadar Sharma argues in an article in The Economic Times why the company in question deserves to be compelled to address reasonable questions.

Moderator


Cognitive dissonance is hard work!

10 May, 2008

In a country where 70% of irrigation water and 80% of its domestic water supplies come from its rapidly depleting groundwater reserves, groundwater recharge is bound to get unstilted support (Water shortage is the issue: ET, April 14). What if the recharge is funded by Coca-Cola from out of the profit it nets by extracting groundwater in the first place! That the company’s expanding business eyes country’s groundwater reserves is pushed aside. Not without reason as everybody is brainwashed by the corporate PR that passes for news these days, which makes everyone think that the Coca-Cola groundwater recharge model is the greatest invention to come down the pike since the wheel was invented.

It needs multiple voices and committed cheerleaders to hold aloft the corporation’s water stewardship credentials. That it’s bottled water brand Dancing was awarded with ‘Consumer’s International 2007 International Bad Product Awards’ - filtering drinkable tap water and selling it back to the market, particularly in Europe; that it faces charges for human rights abuses of union members trying to organise Coca-Cola plants in Colombia; and that two-thirds of freshwater used by Coca-Cola is converted into wastewater globally are facts that the company will see erased sooner from the public memory!

Co-opting unsuspecting civil society organisations to support corporation’s green makeover comes handy. Coca-Cola’s long-term partnership with the World-wide Fund for Nature; it’s recent support of $1 million to the Global Water Initiative, and its ongoing funding for more than 100 community water projects in 49 countries are designed to help the company avoid addressing reasonable questions. In India, where the privatisation of the state is nearly complete and where the idea of capitalism is fast sinking into middle-class psyche, the propaganda that a beverage company is recharging groundwater gets accepted without question.

No surprise, therefore, the groundwater withdrawal by Coca-Cola in Plachimada in Kerala is not seen as gross violation of a communal asset for meeting private interests. In similar tone, the soft water company’s groundwater withdrawal in Kaladhera in Jaipur is considered insignificant when compared to irrigation withdrawals in the same region. Need it be argued that while irrigation withdrawals are in larger public interest, groundwater extraction helps the company accumulate private wealth. Can appropriation of communal asset like water be justified for generating corporate profits?

That the profit thus generated are channelised to demonstrate how capitalism actually works if done right, and how if done right it will save those people from underdevelopment and lives of hardship and misery is at the core of Coca-Cola’s community initiatives. Let there be no doubt that while the intentions of the company may seem pious on paper, its philanthropic motive is shrouded in corporate mystery. Milton Friedman had rightfully said: “there is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.”

Coca-Cola rightly argues that a successful business must be - in both perception and reality - a functioning part of every community in which it operates. No wonder, it supports no less than 320 community water projects across 17 states and takes pride in generating 15 additional jobs through supply and distribution for each job in the company. It maintains that by creating jobs and enabling business it contributes to alleviating poverty in the communities it serves. But that each job makes water dearer to the communities and that it returns to them in bottled form at exorbitant price is something the company will like us to ignore.

Undoubtedly, there are myriad anomalies in managing public water distribution systems that have resulted in severe water shortages across the country. Allowing multinational corporations unrestricted access to groundwater under the Indian Easement Act is one amongst them.

How indeed the country treats Coca-Cola and its clones will determine how prepared it is towards addressing the issue of emerging water poverty? A country that is dependent on groundwater for meeting its growing public demand cannot allow private companies to siphon profit out of its shrinking groundwater reserves in return of suspected favours via a vulnerable civil society. Can a killer be pardoned because he engages in simultaneous public service too?

Sudhirendar Sharma

(The author has served at the World Bank’s Water & Sanitation Program and currently heads the Delhi-based; The Ecological Foundation)

The Economic Times

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Toxic Waste to Energy Plants demonstrate conflict between Kyoto Protocol & Stockholm Convention

Delhi Campaign for Safe Environment (DCSE)

Press Release

Toxic Waste to Energy Plants demonstrate conflict between Kyoto Protocol & Stockholm Convention

Efforts underway to promote POPs emitting technologies for misplaced carbon credits

6/5/2008New Delhi: On the one hand Government of India has initiated a National Implementation Plan of Stockholm convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP)* as per a Press Information Bureau release today, on the other it is promoting POPs like Dioxins emitting technologies like incineration of Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) that are contrary to this Convention. India is a signatory of this UN Convention.

Interestingly, the PIB release noted that that the work included “Inventory of intentionally produced POP’s including Dioxin, furans and PCBs in air, water, land, waste, stock and regulatory mechanism and infrastructure capacity.” An Inception Workshop for the development of a National Implementation Plan of Stockholm convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP) was organized today as a first step to prepare implementation mechanism in India.

It is noteworthy that Union Minister of Renewable Energy has already announced 31 such projects in the parliament although Supreme Court 's last order in Writ Petition (Civil) 888 of 1996 based on court's Waste to Energy Committee's report. The incinerator based WTE projects in Delhi are in violation of the court order and sets a bad precedent. These projects demonstrate a case of conflict between Kyoto Protocol and Stockholm Convention. There are efforts underway to push these hazardous technologies to earn misplaced carbon credits.
Dioxins emitting technology-based waste to energy (WTE) projects that are coming up in the residential areas of Timarpur, Okhla (Sukhdev Vihar) and Ghazipur in the Delhi is contrary to even the National Environmental Policy, 2006 and ignores grave public health concerns that have inter-generational health impacts. It is fraught with disastrous consequences for public health. Delhi Campaign for Safe Environment (DCSE), a coalition of environmental researchers and the concerned residents have denounced the proposed plants.
Unmindful of the violation of Stockholm convention, Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has announced that it plans to undertake POPs emitting projects in Timarpur, Okhla (Sukhdev Vihar) and Ghazipur to earn carbon credits. MCD's own Waste Master Plan says that RDF is a polluting technology that is adopted in countries whose environmental standards are lax.
The use of RDF implies burning of mixed waste including plastics and paper. As per the Municipal Waste Handling and Management Rules, the combustion of PVC plastics is banned. In the making of RDF, we see no practical possibility of PVC plastics being segregated (from other plastics) in the waste stream since there is no labeling of such plastics as PVC or non-PVC, nor are PVC plastics picked out separately by waste pickers. In fact they pick out all plastics. (please also see para 6). Ban on the burning of PVC has a sound technical basis. Burning PVC emits POPs.
Referring among other things to the originally failed Timarpur incineration plant, a 'White Paper on Pollution in Delhi with an Action Plan' prepared by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests said this: "The experience of the incineration plant at Timarpur, Delhi and the briquette plant at Bombay support the fact that thermal treatment of municipal solid waste is not feasible, in situations where the waste has a low calorific value. A critical analysis of biological treatment as an option was undertaken for processing of municipal solid waste in Delhi and it has been recommended that composting will be a viable option. Considering the large quantities of waste requiring to be processed, a mechanical composting plant will be needed."
"The Okhla Waste-to-Energy Plant is being located inside dozens of densely populated residential colonies. When the policy of the government is to shift or relocate all existing industries whatsoever from the residential areas, Why double standards? This is surely going to have serious health hazards for all the residents for all times to come. There is a lot of resentments and unhappiness because no voice is being raised against this project, which is being projected through the media as an environmentally sustainable project by the stakeholders," said affected residents like Anil Misra, P K Nayyar, Shahid Hasan, S C Sarin, Air Comdr (Rtd.) S C Mehra and N Aggarwal.besides more than 200 people who have signed a letter opposing the project.
As of May, 2008 the Project Design Documents of the proposed plants the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and MNRE are promoting the proposed a 16 MW WTE plant. The MCD proposes to deliver waste for free and even the New Delhi Municipal Council is joining the bandwagon as well. The project is located within the city across 18 acres of land in Okhla and Timarpur. The construction should have started this very month as per the document submitted to the CDM Executive Board. The proposed project includes two MSW processing plants at Okhla and Timarpur. Besides the Timarpur-Okhla projects, "Unique Waste Processing Company", a subsidiary of ILFS Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited has floated "East Delhi Waste Processing Company Private Limited" as a special purpose vehicle for incinerating refuse derived fuel (RDF to generate electricity at the Ghazipur site.
Besides persistent organic pollutants (POPs) listed for elimination under the United Nations's Stockholm Convention on POPs, heavy metals like Mercury are also emitted. POPs like Dioxins and furans are a family of potent endocrine disruptors in miniscule quantities (parts per trillion) and cancer causing that enters the food chain. They can impact whole populations and lead to congenital disorders, since they pass on from mother to child. Waste incineration is one of the key sources of dioxins worldwide.
For details: Gopal Krishna, DCSE E-mail: krishnagreen@gmail.com, Mb: 98180896609, Dr Sudhirendar Sharma, 9868384744, Ravi Agarwal, 011-24328006, Dr Syamala Mani, 9811428447
*The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants was adopted in the Conference of Plenipotentiaries held at Stockholm on 22-23 May, 2001. It focuses on reducing and eliminating the production/use and release of 12 chemicals include – aldrin, chlordane, DDT, dieldrin, endrin, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex, toxaphene, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins and furans and continued use of DDT. The Stockholm Convention has come into force for India on April 13, 2006. India signed the Convention on 14th May, 2002. GEF has sanctioned US $ 3,074,700 for India’s National Implementation Plan (NIP) Project with project duration of two years. The Project documents has been signed on 8th November, 2007 by GEF Operation Focal Points in India.

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Misplaced Claims

Delhi Campaign for Safe Environment (DCSE)
For a safer food chain


Press Release

Environmental & Citizen Groups Reject Toxic Waste to Energy Plants

Public health disaster on the horizon amid misplaced carbon credit claims

01/5/2008 New Delhi: Dioxins emitting technology-based waste to energy (WTE) projects that are coming up in the residential areas of Timarpur, Okhla (Sukhdev Vihar) and Ghazipur in the Delhi is contrary to even the National Environmental Policy, 2006 and ignores grave public health concerns that have inter-generational health impacts.

At Round Table in Indian Social Institute, environmental researchers and residents of colonies where these projects are sited denounced the proposed plants in the presence of the project proponents and opined that its fraught with disastrous consequences for public health. Delhi Campaign for Safe Environment (DCSE) had organized the meeting.

MCD has announced that it plans to earn carbon credits through Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of Kyoto Protocol from the projects in Timarpur, Okhla (Sukhdev Vihar) and Ghazipur.

The environmental researchers are of the considered opinion that technological intervention of the kind Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) is undertaking to deal with capital’s garbage problem at the behest of Union Ministry of New Renewable Energy (MNRE) would distort municipal waste management beyond repair.

They argued that the claims regarding carbon credits from these proposed projects are manifestly misplaced because as per Annexure A of the Protocol, waste incineration is a green house gas emitter. Also from a purely climate change perspective, composting and bio-methanation technologies are far superior to incineration. In fact composting and recycling both minimize carbon release as well as improve carbon sequestration to some degree.

Despite this a Memorandum of Understanding between MCD and Infrastructure Projects, Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (ILFS) was signed by D K Mittal, the CEO of Timarpur Waste Management Company Pvt. Ltd. (TWMCPL) and Rakesh Mehta, IAS the then Commissioner of MCD. Mehta is Chief Secretary in Delhi Government. Mittal is also a serving IAS officer, besides being the CEO, Special Infrastructure Projects, Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (ILFS). The project got listed before the board on 23 May 2006, and the board sought comments until 21 June, 2006 and the same has since been registered. The ministry of environment is the nodal ministry for CDM and now one its official is the Chairman of the CDM Executive Board that has registered the project.

Senior IAS officers Rakesh Mehta, D K Mittal, A K Gupta, Advisor, MNRE and Rajesh Kumar Shethi, official of Ministry of Environment & CDM Executive Board who are responsible for advocating and registering these polluting technology must answer why the 1990 plant failed in Timarpur, Delhi. MCD’s own Waste Master Plan says that RDF is a polluting technology that is adopted in countries whose environmental standards are lax.

“While mounds of waste may disappear, it will end up creating landfills in the sky. Bureaucratic arrogance and a dubious economic feasibility sans environment concerns is bent upon gifting the capital city with waste-to energy plants based on a technology that has been proven obsolete across the world. Notwithstanding that a replica of historic folly has been turned into a monument at Timarpur, three new monuments will soon be in the making at so and so places. Delhi is getting ready to rid of its enormous but at the cost of creating three mini-Bhopals,” said Dr Sudhirendar Sharma, a former World Bank official and Director, Ecological Foundation.

Gopal Krishna of DCSE said, “The technology that failed is exactly the same technology that is being suggested now. These polluting technologies are being pushed in various disguises. There is a white paper of the ministry that rules out use of incinerators because it has failed. The same paper recommends biological treatment method. The proposed technology has failed a WTE project in Delhi in early 1990s. This is despite the fact that India also lost the case in an international arbitration court. The project proponents were severely reprimanded by the Delhi High Court and the Comptroller General of India too investigated the matter and concluded that Indian waste is not suitable for energy generation.” The court ruled in April 2001 on the plant's failure and had taken issue with the procurement of the incineration plant at a cost of Rs.20 crores saying, "No order should have been placed for procurement of the plant unless its utilities were completely known."

Criticism did not come just from the Delhi High Court alone. Referring among other things to the orginally failed Timarpur incineration plant, a 'White Paper on Pollution in Delhi with an Action Plan' prepared by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests said this: "The experience of the incineration plant at Timarpur, Delhi and the briquette plant at Bombay support the fact that thermal treatment of municipal solid waste is not feasible, in situations where the waste has a low calorific value. A critical analysis of biological treatment as an option was undertaken for processing of municipal solid waste in Delhi and it has been recommended that composting will be a viable option. Considering the large quantities of waste requiring to be processed, a mechanical composting plant will be needed."

"The Okhla Waste-to-Energy Plant is being located inside dozens of densely populated residential colonies. When the policy of the government is to shift or relocate all existing industries whatsoever from the residential areas, Why double standards? This is surely going to have serious health hazards for all the residents for all times to come. There is a lot of resentments and unhappiness because no voice is being raised against this project, which is being projected through the media as an environmentally sustainable project by the stakeholders,” said affected residents like Anil Misra, P K Nayyar, Shahid Hasan, S C Sarin, Air Comdr (Rtd.) S C Mehra and N Aggarwal.besides more than 200 people who have signed a letter opposing the project.

As of April, 2008 the Project Design Documents of the proposed plants the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and MNRE are promoting the proposed a 16 MW WTE plant. The MCD proposes to deliver waste for free and even the New Delhi Municipal Council is joining the bandwagon as well. The project is located within the city across 18 acres of land in Okhla and Timarpur. The construction should have started this very month as per the document submitted to the CDM Executive Board. The proposed project includes two MSW processing plants at Okhla and Timarpur. Besides the Timarpur-Okhla projects, “Unique Waste Processing Company”, a subsidiary of ILFS Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited has floated “East Delhi Waste Processing Company Private Limited” as a special purpose vehicle for incinerating refuse derived fuel (RDF to generate electricity at the Ghazipur site.

“’Energy’ is only one of the several possible products of waste, and also has its own cost, even though it is the only product subsidized by the MNRE. In fact the overall energy balance from Indian municipal waste is negative,” said Ravi Agarwal, Toxics Link.

“Such projects are against the cardinal principles of sane waste management-Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. There is no alternative to waste minimization, waste segregation at source and biological treatment method,” said Dr Shyamala Mani, Programme Director, Centre for Environment Education (CEE). It is important that any effort of integrated waste management should also recognize and include these environmentally safe practices that deserve institutional support. The use of RDF implies burning of mixed waste including plastics and paper, to gain calorific value (up to 3000 kcal) of what is otherwise a low energy mix. (500 kcal). As per the Municipal Waste Handling and Management Rules, the combustion of PVC plastics is banned. In the making of RDF, we see no practical possibility of PVC plastics being segregated (from other plastics) in the waste stream since there is no labeling of such plastics as PVC or non-PVC, nor are PVC plastics picked out separately by waste pickers. In fact they pick out all plastics. (please also see para 6). Ban on the burning of PVC has a sound technical basis, added Agarwal.

Besides persistent organic pollutants (POPs) listed for elimination under the United Nations’s Stockholm Convention on POPs, heavy metals like Mercury are also emitted. POPs like Dioxins and furans are a family of potent endocrine disruptors in miniscule quantities (parts per trillion) and cancer causing that enters the food chain. They can impact whole populations and have inter-generational health impacts, since they pass on from mother to child. Waste incineration is one of the key sources of dioxins worldwide. It is highly dangerous from a public health perspective, added Gopal Krishna.

Even Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy wrote: "We therefore direct that land filling of unsegregated wastes, incineration and recovery of energy from municipal waste shall henceforth not receive any Govt. sponsorship, encouragement or aid in any manner, except for completion of any projects that have already invested 30% of their capital cost on site."

It is noteworthy that Union Minister of Renewable Energy has already announced 31 such projects in the parliament although Supreme Court 's last order in Writ Petition (Civil) 888 of 1996 based on court’s Waste to Energy Committee's report had vacated stay for 5 Biomethanation Technology based WTE projects. The incinerator based WTE projects in Delhi are in violation of the court order and sets a bad precedent. As a genuine solution, the Inter-Ministerial Task Force on Integrated Plant Nutrient Management has recommended setting up of 1000 compost plants all over the country and has allocated Rs.800 crore for the same. This report has been submitted in the Supreme Court as well. Notably, this report recommends composting as a measure for waste management instead of energy recovery because Indian soil is carbon deficit. But the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and Urban Development has ignored it.

The participants included project proponents and some journalists.



For details: Gopal Krishna, DCSE E-mail: krishnagreen@gmail.com, Mb: 98180896609

Dr Sudhirendar Sharma, EF, 9868384744

Ravi Agarwal, TL, 011-24328006

Dr Syamala Mani, CEE, 9811428447

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