The questions Dr Pachauri still has to answer

Note: ToxicsWatch has consistently held that TERI is sponsored by corporations with dubious credentials. It has issued campaigned against its support of polluting technologies, projects, fake CSR activities and hollow initiative called UN's Global Compact. It has provided brand positioning opportunities to companies involved in corporate crimes by letting them greenwash and blue wash their blatant acts of environmental and human rights violations.

At the least, Dr Rajendra Pachauri's IPCC position as the world's "top climate official" has been earning a substantial income for Teri, the institute he runs.


By Christopher Booker
26 Dec 2009

It was not just in Britain last week that we all shivered through pre-Christmas snow, ice and cold. Blizzards sweeping across Europe, from the Channel Tunnel to Moscow, killed more than 100 people. Even the beaches of Nice and the gondolas of Venice lay under a blanket of white.

Across the Atlantic, as the northern hemisphere was plunged into its third freezing winter in succession, violent snowstorms left more than two thirds of the US and almost the whole of Canada under December snow for the first time in decades. In the wake of that acrimonious shambles in Copenhagen, ever more questions are now being asked not only over the validity of the science behind the belief that man-made CO2 is causing runaway global warming but about the methods being used to meet that supposed threat.

Pachauri Responds
UPDATE #2: The TERI press release is online here.

UPDATE: Some additional details from the TERI press release here.

Rajendra Pachauri has responded to the conflict 0f interest allegations levied against him in the Telegraph, which I discussed here several days ago. Dr. Pachauri's rebutal comes in the form of a press release issued by TERI, the organization that he directs in India. I am in possession of the press release, having received it from a colleague who sent it to an email list. Yesterday, I emailed the TERI media office to ask if I could post the release up here in full. I have not yet heard back from them, so I won't yet post it up in full. Presumably, they issued it to be read and I assume that The Telegraph will post it up sooner or later. The release ends with a threat to escalate the issue, presumably a reference to UK libel laws.

The release provides details on more than $250,000 in payments to TERI over the past three and a half years in exchange for Dr. Pachauri's services from companies with a direct financial stake in climate policy. I do not see how this information in any way clears up the issue. In fact, it raises more difficult questions for the IPCC and Dr. Pachauri, who based on this information is unambiguously in violation of conflict of interest policies of the WMO and UN, the parent bodies of the IPCC. This level of remuneration from parties interested in specific climate policy outcomes would clearly violate conflict of interest guidelines at most federal agencies with respect to service on science advisory panels (e.g., FDA has a threshold of $50,000 per year). The fact that the money goes to an organization that Dr. Pachauri directs rather than directly into his pocket is not relevant (to the FDA, WMO or UN).

The press release is being reported on in India, for instance:

In his rejoinder to the newspaper, Pachauri said: “IPCC makes no policy recommendations, and all its reports are in the public domain, widely distributed and disseminated across the world. There is nothing in this report that could have any proprietary benefit.”

The newspaper reported that Pachauri was part of groups, including green firms, which benefited from IPCC’s recommendations, terming this a conflict of interest.

The article said The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), which Pachauri is heading since the 1980s, maintains close links with the Tata group and assists it in developing its carbon trading business worldwide.

“This is far from the truth. The Tatas do enjoy the envious reputation of establishing many institutions of excellence and TERI was one among them. As TERI’s interest went beyond energy and included natural resources, we decided in 2001 to retain the acronym and change the expansion. This signifies our independence from any direct Tata connection,” Pachauri said.

It is odd that Dr. Pachauri would raise the policy irrelevance of the IPCC as defense. This is odd for two reasons. First, the IPCC is designed to be "policy relevant" and second,perhaps more than anyone, Dr. Pachauri routinely invokes the IPCC in support of very specific policy recommendations. This line of defense raises even further questions for the IPCC.

That the media -- other than the Telegraph -- is not on this issue is rather amazing. Writing recently in the Washington Post, Michael Gerson helps to explain these dynamics: "Climate scientists are clearly accustomed to deference. Theirs is a community coddled by global elites, extensively funded by governments, celebrated by Hollywood and honored with international prizes." If Dr. Pachauri were the head of a drug safety advisory committee, a Bush administration official editing agency climate reports or a different type of UN bureaucrat, allegations of conflict of interest would almost certainly get closer scrutiny.

It is not anti-science or anti-climate policy to ask that scientists be held to the same standard as everyone else. I'd argue that holding science to high standards is about as pro-science and pro-climate policy as one can get. The IPCC needs to be asked some uncomfortable questions. In the long run, climate science and policy will both be better for it.

Questions over business deals of UN climate change guru Dr Rajendra Pachauri
The head of the UN's climate change panel - Dr Rajendra Pachauri - is accused of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies, Christopher Booker and Richard North write.

20 Dec 2009

Daily Telegraph,

London UK

The head of the UN's climate change panel - Dr Rajendra Pachauri - is accused of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies.

No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007.

Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as the world's top climate scientist), as a former raiway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.

What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC's policy recommendations.

These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in carbon trading and "sustainable technologies", which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year.

Today, in addition to his role as chairman of the IPCC, Dr Pachauri occupies more than a score of such posts, acting as director or adviser to many of the bodies which play a leading role in what has become known as the international "climate industry".

It is remarkable how only very recently has the staggering scale of Dr Pachauri's links to so many of these concerns come to light, inevitably raising questions as to how the world's leading "climate official" can also be personally involved in so many organisations which stand to benefit from the IPCC's recommendations.

The issue of Dr Pachauri's potential conflict of interest was first publicly raised last Tuesday when, after giving a lecture at Copenhagen University, he was handed a letter by two eminent "climate sceptics". One was the Stephen Fielding, the Australian Senator who sparked the revolt which recently led to the defeat of his government's "cap and trade scheme". The other, from Britain, was Lord Monckton, a longtime critic of the IPCC's science, who has recently played a key part in stiffening opposition to a cap and trade bill in the US Senate.

Their open letter first challenged the scientific honesty of a graph prominently used in the IPCC's 2007 report, and shown again by Pachauri in his lecture, demanding that he should withdraw it. But they went on to question why the report had not declared Pachauri's personal interest in so many organisations which seemingly stood to profit from its findings.

The letter, which included information first disclosed in last week's Sunday Telegraph, was circulated to all the 192 national conference delegations, calling on them to dismiss Dr Pachauri as IPCC chairman because of recent revelations of his conflicting interests.

The original power base from which Dr Pachauri has built up his worldwide network of influence over the past decade is the Delhi-based Tata Energy Research Institute, of which he became director in 1981 and director-general in 2001. Now renamed The Energy Research Institute, TERI was set up in 1974 by India's largest privately-owned business empire, the Tata Group, with interests ranging from steel, cars and energy to chemicals, telecommunications and insurance (and now best-known in the UK as the owner of Jaguar, Land Rover, Tetley Tea and Corus, Britain's largest steel company).

Although TERI has extended its sponsorship since the name change, the two concerns are still closely linked.

In India, Tata exercises enormous political power, shown not least in the way it has managed to displace hundreds of thousands of poor tribal villagers in the eastern states of Orissa and Jarkhand to make way for large-scale iron mining and steelmaking projects.

Initially, when Dr Pachauri took over the running of TERI in the 1980s, his interests centred on the oil and coal industries, which may now seem odd for a man who has since become best known for his opposition to fossil fuels. He was, for instance, a director until 2003 of India Oil, the country's largest commercial enterprise, and until this year remained as a director of the National Thermal Power Generating Corporation, its largest electricity producer.

In 2005, he set up GloriOil, a Texas firm specialising in technology which allows the last remaining reserves to be extracted from oilfields otherwise at the end of their useful life.

However, since Pachauri became a vice-chairman of the IPCC in 1997, TERI has vastly expanded its interest in every kind of renewable or sustainable technology, in many of which the various divisions of the Tata Group have also become heavily involved, such as its project to invest $1.5 billion (£930 million) in vast wind farms.

Dr Pachauri's TERI empire has also extended worldwide, with branches in the US, the EU and several countries in Asia. TERI Europe, based in London, of which he is a trustee (along with Sir John Houghton, one of the key players in the early days of the IPCC and formerly head of the UK Met Office) is currently running a project on bio-energy, financed by the EU.

Another project, co-financed by our own Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the German insurance firm Munich Re, is studying how India's insurance industry, including Tata, can benefit from exploiting the supposed risks of exposure to climate change. Quite why Defra and UK taxpayers should fund a project to increase the profits of Indian insurance firms is not explained.

Even odder is the role of TERI's Washington-based North American offshoot, a non-profit organisation, of which Dr Pachauri is president. Conveniently sited on Pennsylvania Avenue, midway between the White House and the Capitol, this body unashamedly sets out its stall as a lobbying organisation, to "sensitise decision-makers in North America to developing countries' concerns about energy and the environment."

TERI-NA is funded by a galaxy of official and corporate sponsors, including four branches of the UN bureaucracy; four US government agencies; oil giants such as Amoco; two of the leading US defence contractors; Monsanto, the world's largest GM producer; the WWF (the environmentalist campaigning group which derives much of its own funding from the EU) and two world leaders in the international "carbon market", between them managing more than $1 trillion (£620 billion) worth of assets.

All of this is doubtless useful to the interests of Tata back in India, which is heavily involved not just in bio-energy, renewables and insurance but also in "carbon trading", the worldwide market in buying and selling the right to emit CO2. Much of this is administered at a profit by the UN under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) set up under the Kyoto Protocol, which the Copenhagen treaty was designed to replace with an even more lucrative successor.

Under the CDM, firms and consumers in the developed world pay for the right to exceed their "carbon limits" by buying certificates from those firms in countries such as India and China which rack up carbon credits for every renewable energy source they develop or by showing that they have in some way reduced their own "carbon emissions".

It is one of these deals, reported in last week's Sunday Telegraph, which is enabling Tata to transfer three million tonnes of steel production from its Corus plant in Redcar to a new plant in Orissa, thus gaining a potential £1.2 billion in "carbon credits" (and putting 1,700 people on Teesside out of work).

More than three-quarters of the world "carbon market benefits India and China in this way. India alone has 1,455 CDM projects in operation, worth $33 billion (£20 billion), many of them facilitated by Tata" and it is perhaps unsurprising that Dr Pachauri also serves on the advisory board of the Chicago Climate Exchange, the largest and most lucrative carbon-trading exchange in the world, which was also assisted by TERI in setting up India's own carbon exchange.

But this is peanuts compared to the numerous other posts to which Dr Pachauri has been appointed in the years since the UN chose him to become the world's top "climate-change official".

In 2007, for instance, he was appointed to the advisory board of Siderian, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm specialising in "sustainable technologies", where he was expected to provide the Fund with "access, standing and industrial exposure at the highest level."

In 2008 he was made an adviser on renewable and sustainable energy to the Credit Suisse bank and the Rockefeller Foundation. He joined the board of the Nordic Glitnir Bank, as it launched its Sustainable Future Fund, looking to raise funding of £4 billion. He became chairman of the Indochina Sustainable Infrastructure Fund, whose CEO was confident it could soon raise £100 billion.

In the same year he became a director of the International Risk Governance Council in Geneva, set up by EDF and E.On, two of Europe's largest electricity firms, to promote "bio-energy". This year Dr Pachauri joined the New York investment fund Pegasus as a "strategic adviser", and was made chairman of the advisory board to the Asian Development Bank, strongly supportive of CDM trading, whose CEO warned that failure to agree a treaty at Copenhagen would lead to a collapse of the carbon market.

The list of posts now held by Dr Pachauri as a result of his new-found world status goes on and on. He has become head of Yale University's Climate and Energy Institute, which enjoys millions of dollars of US state and corporate funding. He is on the climate change advisory board of Deutsche Bank. He is Director of the Japanese Institute for Global Environmental Strategies and was until recently an adviser to Toyota Motors. Recalling his origins as a railway engineer, he is even a policy adviser to SNCF, France's state-owned railway company.

Meanwhile, back home in India, he serves on an array of influential government bodies, including the Economic Advisory Committee to the prime minister, holds various academic posts and has somehow found time in his busy life to publish 22 books.

Dr Pachauri never shrinks from giving the world frank advice on all matters relating to the menace of global warming. The latest edition of TERI News quotes him as telling the US Environmental Protection Agency that it must go ahead with regulating US carbon emissions without waiting for Congress to pass its cap and trade bill.

It reports how, in the days before Copenhagen, he called on the developing nations which had been historically responsible for the global warming crisis to make "concrete commitments" to aiding developing countries such as India with funding and technology while insisting that India could not agree to binding emissions targets. India, he said, must bargain for large-scale subsidies from the West for developing solar power, and Western funds must be made available for geo-engineering projects to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.

As a vegetarian Hindu, Dr Pachauri repeated his call for the world to eat less meat to cut down on methane emissions (as usual he made no mention of what was to be done about India's 400 million sacred cows). He further called for a ban on serving ice in restaurants and for meters to be fitted to all hotel rooms, so that guests could be charged a carbon tax on their use of heating and air-conditioning.

One subject the talkative Dr Pachauri remains silent on, however, is how much money he is paid for all these important posts, which must run into millions of dollars. Not one of the bodies for which he works publishes his salary or fees, and this notably includes the UN, which refuses to reveal how much we all pay him as one of its most senior officials.

As for TERI itself, Dr Pachauri's main job for nearly 30 years, it is so coy about money that it does not even publish its accounts the financial statement amounts to two income and expenditure pie charts which contain no detailed figures.

Dr Pachauri is equally coy about TERI's links with Tata, the company which set it up in the 1970s and whose name it continued to bear until 2002, when it was changed to just The Energy Research Institute. A spokesman at the time said "we have not severed our past relationship with the Tatas, the change is only for convenience."

But the real question mark over TERI's director-general remains over the relationship between his highly lucrative commercial jobs and his role as chairman of the IPCC.

TERI have, for example, become a preferred bidder for Kuwaiti contracts to clean up the mess left by Saddam Hussein in their oilfields in 1991. The $3 billion (£1.9 billion) cost of the contracts has been provided by the UN. If successful, this would be tenth time TERI have benefited from a contract financed by the UN.

Certainly no one values the services of TERI more than the EU, which has included Dr Pachauriâ's institute as a partner in no fewer than 12 projects designed to assist in devising the EU's policies on mitigating the effects of the global warming predicted by the IPCC.

But whether those 1,700 Corus workers on Teesside will next month be so happy to lose their jobs to India, thanks to the workings of that international "carbon market" about which Dr Pachauri is so enthusiastic, is quite another matter.

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2009/12/pachauri-responds.html
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Questionable Accord

Violates UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Two years of negotiations for a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol since negotiations in Bali has yielded disappointing results. The failure of most of the 37 industrialized countries and the European Community that have committed to reducing their emissions by an average of 5 percent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012 is quite regressive in nature.

Difference between Latin America and United States of America and the moral superiority of the former over the latter starkly manifested itself at the global platform of UN in Denmark. calling for combating inequality, Venezuela President Hugo Chavez took the stage at COP15 to argue that seven percent of the world’s population-500 million richest people- are responsible for 50 percent of emissions, while the poorest 50 percent accounts for only seven percent of emissions and declared, "If the climate was a capitalist bank, the rich governments would have saved it."

President Barack Obama who is the Commander-in-Chief of a nation (along with forty three other countries) in the midst of two wars declared in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech that US is "the world's sole military superpower" and "the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, famine and mass displacement that will fuel more conflict for decades. For this reason, it is not merely scientists and activists who call for swift and forceful action - it is military leaders in my country and others who understand that our common security hangs in the balance." "As the world's largest economy and the world's second largest emitter", he announced in Copenhagen quite miserly that it "will fulfill the commitments that we have made: cutting our emissions in the range of 17 percent by 2020, and by more than 80 percent by 2050" but failed to even mention it in the COP 15 Decision that "Takes note of the Copenhagen Accord of 18 December 2009" by the wherein the Conference of the Parties. It is noteworth that China, which is the largest emitter has nearly five times the US population.

Copenhagen Accord has recognized "the crucial role of reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation" (REDD), for "the immediate establishment of a mechanism including REDD-plus, to enable the mobilization of financial resources from developed countries". enhanced action on mitigation, including substantial finance to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD-plus)". It refers to "The collective commitment by developed countries" to "provide new and additional resources, including forestry and investments through international institutions, approaching USD 30 billion for the period 2010 – 2012 with balanced allocation between adaptation and mitigation." In 2005, at the COP-11 in Montreal the programme of 'reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries' was initiated which was referred to the UNFCCC's Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technical Advice. US and some other rich nations had disputed the proposal but had failed in their attempts because in 2007 at COP-13 in Bali, an agreement was reached on “the urgent need to take further meaningful action to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation”, which was to be finalized at COP-15.

The Bali Action Plan adopted at COP13 called for “Policy approaches and positive incentives on issues relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries; and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries”. The above paragraph (paragraph 1b (iii)) in the Bali Action Plan is referred to as “REDD-plus”. It is feared that “REDD-plus” includes activities which would have adverse consequences for indigenous people, local communities and forests. The reference to “conservation” in the text might endanger the rights for indigenous peoples and local communities, the mention of "enhancement of forest carbon stocks” might result in conversion of land (including forests) to industrial tree plantations, with serious implications for biodiversity, forests and local communities and there is a danger that sustainable management of forests” is likely to include subsidies to commercial logging operations in old-growth forests, indigenous peoples’ territory or in villagers’ community forests.

The Accord states that developed countries have committed "to a goal of mobilizing jointly USD 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries." A significant portion of such funding should flow through the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund and it has been decided that the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund shall be established as an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the Convention to support projects, programme, policies and other activities in developing countries related to mitigation including REDD-plus, adaptation, capacity-building, technology development and transfer. Besides this a Technology Mechanism has been decided to accelerate technology development and transfer in support of action on adaptation and mitigation. REDD and REDD-plus has the potential to be violate the letter and spirit of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, efforts must be made to do away with such texts which consequents in furthering their historical deprivation. Even UN Convention on Biological Diversity ignored the rights of the indigenous peoples. It is not a coincidence that the poorest 20% of the world are living on a tiny 1.6% of global wealth and huge part of it comprises of indigenous people.

While the circumstances of Accor's bith and birth pangs merit attention, to begin with it must be noted that the Accord reached in Denmark at the UNFCCC's COP15 summit was agreed between the US and the BASIC group – Brazil, South Africa, India and China but notably it is now being claimed that it was developed by a group of 25-30 heads of governments of both developing and developed countries. Is it true that only a handful of countries – Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Sudan and Tuvalu – opposed the Accord?. Assuming that the claims being made are true, the fact remains it is contrary to the UN’s consensus decision-making model, which prevent the adoption of the Accord by the UNFCCC. Initially, it was stated that UNFCCC simply took note of the Accord but now it is being argued that has the same legal meaning in the UN as “accepts”. While the legal implications of the "takes note", evident lack of consenus and claim of support of majority of 194 countries who are party to UNFCCC will remain unsettled at least till the next meeting in Mexico, what is clearly settled is a profound shift in global geopolitics.

The system of international treaty making in the post second world war era has not changed since the days of the Opium Wars (1857-58) in which China, India and Western countries were involved. The task to get a legally binding agreement has now shifted to Mexico City in a years time. Indeed a 10 billion dollars per year allocation has ensured a carbon market worth $1.2 trillion per year. Coincidentally, as per the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in 2008 the 15 countries with the highest military budgets spent close to $1.2 trillion on armed forces. Whatever has remained in climate talks is because of this market and what is off the negotiation table is military industrial complex. UN climate talks, WTO talks and nuclear talks must be examined together to get real picture else one would end up getting nothing beyond glimpses and fragments of the truth about the global and local affairs. Clearly, when rich nations talk about climate its about strategic importance of commerce and not about golden hearted environmentalism.

As of now the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has been confirmed till 2012 but the future is all set to take a different route based on three documents namely, Report of the Ad hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA), Report of the Ad hoc Working Group on Further Commitments of Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) and Copenhagen Accord. But the legitimacy of the Accord is questionable because any this text does not come from working groups under the Kyoto Protocol and the Convention.

UNFCCC is looking forward to the next major meeting at the CoP 16 in Mexico to achieve what was not achieved at Cop 15, which is second commitement period. Take-it-or-leave-it document called Copenhagen Accord was described by the UN as “politically important”, which it is for sure for it calls "for an assessment of the implementation of this Accord to be completed by 2015, including in light of the Convention’s ultimate objective. This would include consideration of strengthening the long-term goal referencing various matters presented by the science, including in relation to temperature rises of 1.5 degrees Celsius."

Notably, this disputed Accord talks of a post 2012 and Convention's ultimate objectives in a manifest attempt to pave the way for the future but remains imprisoned in an economic growth model that precedes the first world war. Its a model that ensured that the total income of the 500 richest individuals in the world is greater than the income of the 416 million poorest people, 40 per percent of the global population receives only 5 percent of world income, 1.1 billion people without access to drinking water, 2.6 billion without sanitation services, over 800 million illiterate and 1.02 billion hungry people.

Gopal Krishna

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TOXIC WASTE DUMPING FROM JAPAN ON THE ANVIL?

PRESS NOTE


TOXIC WASTE DUMPING FROM JAPAN ON THE ANVIL?

Civil Society Groups Demand Access to Draft Agreement Between Japan & India

New Delhi/29/12/2009: Civil society groups demand that the contents of the proposed comprehensive economic agreement (CEPA) between Japan and India and the detail of lists of goods and commodities in it must be made public. This demand comes in the wake of Japan’s consistent promotion of hazardous technologies like Dioxins machines and its quest for garbage dumps in places which offer least resistance is well known.

Manmohan Singh’s opening remarks at the Joint Press Interaction with his Japanese counterpart on December 29, 2009, “We have decided to expedite our negotiations on the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement in order to conclude a high quality and balanced agreement. We are hopeful that this can be completed in time for the next Annual Summit meeting” has been greeted with worries

There is an apprehension that the proposed CEPA would include lists of toxic waste that are considered goods or commodities. It will justify the definition of waste as non-waste through a re-classification exercise in linguistic corruption flux of hazardous waste from Japan.

The list entails hazardous wastes that are categorized as goods are residual products, sewage sludge, medical waste, waste from chemical or allied industries, vessels, incinerator ash, oil-contaminated products and nuclear waste.

Indian government is currently in the process of negotiating free trade agreements (FTA) or Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA)/Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with Japanese government which is likely to have adverse impact on health and environment of the citizens. So far twelve rounds of negotiations have been held to conclude a mutually acceptable agreement.

In December, 2006, the Prime Ministers of the Japan and India decided to launch immediate negotiations for the conclusion of a bilateral Economic Partnership Agreement/Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement aiming to complete in substance as soon as possible in approximately two years. It is feared that the agreement is likely to facilitate trade of toxic wastes from Japan to India. Civil society groups have demanded that the hazardous technologies and globally controlled or banned wastes and substances must be excluded from the negotiations in the proposed CEPA. These groups have written letters to both the governments.

At their meeting in New Delhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Japanese premier Yukio Hatoyama decided to expedite negotiations on CEPA so as to conclude it by next year. The manner in "main concerns" and need for “resolving the remaining issues” is being talked reveals the non-transparency in the way trade negotiations being held. The CEPA being negotiated is being conducted in secret and the government is doing little to consult public interest groups in these negotiations. Similar agreements with Philippines and Thailand contain provisions allowing the dumping of waste, which is typical of FTAs being negotiated by Japan. Similar agreements negotiated and ratified by Japan with Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines have the goal of facilitating trade, and are primarily accomplished by reducing tariffs to zero on selected goods.

Civil society groups are worried that by including toxic wastes and other banned substances in the list of goods enjoying preferential tariffs a market environment is created providing an incentive for waste traders to step in and exploit.

Japan has been trying to make UN's Basel Convention[i], and its Basel Ban Amendment[ii] to become ineffective so that it can transfer hazardous wastes by defining it as hazardous materials (meant for recycling) in the CEPA. The connivance of Indian officials in such acts of manufacturing legitimacy for hazardous waste trade is unpardonable. Notably, Indian Supreme Court has banned the trade in hazardous wastes but its orders are being violated with impunity and the agreement is yet another way to outwit the court order.

In Indian case too quite like the Filipinos, the draft CEPA is not being shared with the public interest groups. Once the agreement is signed between the two countries there would be no way of getting critiques of the treaty considered. Negotiations between India and Japan are conducted under a veil of secrecy.

The civil society groups reiterate their demands to both Japanese and Indian officials which are as under: All listings of toxic technology and internationally controlled or banned wastes and substances are expunged from tariff reduction provisions and other exploitative provisions are removed from CEPA and for this condition to be added to the Terms of Reference of the negotiations, Ratification of the Basel Convention's Ban Amendment is accomplished by the two countries at the earliest possible date, Civil society groups are accorded representation and participation in the ongoing negotiations of CEPA, and be given access to all relevant information pertaining to the CEPA negotiations, CEPA negotiations are made open and transparent and a serious program to prevent hazardous and other wastes at source via toxics use reductions, stopping planned obsolescence should be part of CEPA, as well as holding Japanese and Indian manufacturers accountable for the products they produce.

For Details: Gopal Krishna, ToxicsWatch, Mb: 9818089660, E-mail: krishnagreen@gmail.com, Web: toxicswatch.blogpsot.com

Notes: [i] The Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and its Disposal comprises of 169 member countries to date. The Convention requires all countries to take national responsibility for managing their own waste within their own national borders, as well as setting rules on exports that must take place. The , and has passed numerous decisions forbidding exports of hazardous wastes from rich to poorer countries. See: www.basel.int.

[ii] Formally known as Decision III/1, the Basel Ban Amendment was passed in 1995 which prohibits the exports, for disposal or recycling, of hazardous wastes from rich to poorer countries.

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Endosulfan claims 37 lives

BANGALORE, December 23, 2009: On Wednesday it was the turn of former Minister and MLA Shobha Karandlaje to hit out her political opponents in the party. She bagged the occasion in both hands and lashed out at the senior Reddy Minister in the Yeddyurappa government.

Following Revenue Minister G Karunakara Reddy's poor reply to Endosulfan that created health hazards for several people in Dakshina Kannada, Ms Karnadlaje poured many questions to the Minister and sought apt replies. When the Minister unable to provide satisfactory reply, the Chief Minister intervened and satisfied Ms Karandlaje.

Mr Reddy said that the government would take action based on the report given by the Regional Commissioner on the issue. Ms Karandlaje shot back and said already several reports have been submitted. How many more years you need to get reports. There was pin drop silence in the Assembly when the former Minister hit out at Mr Reddy.

Congress members Vasanth Bangera, Sharana Prakash Patil, Opposition leader Siddaramaiah and T B Jayachandra (Congress) also spoke on the subject.

She said the Kerala Government approved a comprehensive scheme for the treatment and rehabilitation of people afflicted by the use of Endosulfan in cashew plantations in Kasaragod district.

Pesticides claimed lives of 37 persons in Puttur, Belthangady taluks of Dakshina Kannada district and Karkala taluk in Udupi district.

Mr B S Yeddyurappa told the Legislative Assembly that he would appeal to the Central Government to ban spraying of Endosulfan using helicopters on cashew plantations.

In the next meeting of Chief Ministers in Delhi, I will convince the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh the need to ban Endosulfan based pesticides.

A total of 137 persons, who have been suffering from diseases caused by pesticide in Dakshina Kannada and Udupi districts, would get a compensation of Rs 50,000. Those who have been rendered physically disabled would be paid monthly pension of Rs 1,000 for their sustenance, he said while intervening during the reply to a call attention notice given by former minister Shobha Karandlaje (BJP), who had recently visited the areas.

The Chief Minister had admitted that the government had received several reports of adverse impact on the health of both people and the cattle by the extensive use of Endosulfan and its based pesticides.

Over 200 people in Belthangady and Puttur taluks in Dakshina Kannada district were suffered deformity due to extensive use of Endosulfan on cashew plants in several villages in two districts, the Chief Minister said.

Earlier drawing the attention of the State Government, Ms Karandlaje said that many people were died after suffering for long and another 18 people had committed suicide without able to access for the treatment.

Several people have been suffering from mental and physical disabilities following spraying of pesticides on cashew between 1980 and 2000, which has claimed 37 lives.

The BJP member also demanded the State Government for filing criminal cases against the pesticide company.

No more lathi charge

Under fire from the opposition over the recent lathi charge on farmers in Chamarajanagar and Davanagere, the BJP government in Karnataka today said there would no be such incidents in the future.

"In future, there will be no lathicharge on farmers," the chief minister announced in the state assembly while replying to a debate on the issue.

Rejecting the opposition charge that his government was anti-farmer, Yeddyurappa also ordered withdrawal of all cases booked against them during their protest.

The chief minister said he would meet farmers, who are on padayatra from Chamarajanagar to Bangalore at Bidadi, and hold parleys with them after accepting Congress leader Siddaramaiah's suggestion.

He, however, rejected the Congress' demand for dropping land acquisition in Davanagere, over which farmers protested leading to police lathicharge on December 11.

"The land was acquired during Congress-JDS coalition government headed by N Dharam Singh and not by my government. It is meant for providing sites to poor. There is no question of dropping the acquisition proceedings," Yeddyurappa said.

Congress and JDS, then, staged a walkout demanding a judicial probe into the lathi charge and suspension of deputy commissioner and superintendent of police of Chamarajnagar district.

Mangolorean

http://mangalorean.com/news.php?newstype=broadcast&broadcastid=161674

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National Policy on Bio-fuels announced

Note: Will it affect the prevailing agrcultural crisis positively? Has it factored in lessons from the food riots in Brazil?

The National Policy on Bio-fuels and its implementation has been approved by the Union Cabinet, according to the release of the Press Information Bureau dated 24 December, 2009. Setting up of a National Biofuel Coordination Committee and a Biofuel Steering Committee has also been approved. The Policy endeavors to facilitate and bring about optimal development and utilization of indigenous biomass feedstocks for production of bio-fuels. The Policy can be visited at the Ministry’s Website www.mnre.gov.in.

Bio-fuels provide a strategic advantage to promote sustainable development and to supplement conventional energy sources in meeting the rapidly increasing requirements for transportation fuels associated with high economic growth, as well as in meeting the energy needs of India’s vast rural population. Bio-fuels can increasingly satisfy these energy needs in an environmentally benign and cost-effective manner while reducing dependence on import of fossil fuels and thereby providing a higher degree of National Energy Security. The Indian approach to bio-fuels is based solely on non-food feedstocks to be raised on degraded or wastelands that are not suited to agriculture, thus avoiding a possible conflict of fuel vs. food security.

The salient features of the National Policy on Bio-fuels are:-

· Bio-diesel production will be taken up from non-edible oil seeds in waste /degraded / marginal lands.

· An indicative target of 20% blending of bio-fuels, both for bio-diesel and bio-ethanol, by 2017 has been proposed.

· Minimum Support Price (MSP) for non-edible oil seeds would be announced with periodic revision to provide fair price to the growers.

· Minimum Purchase Price (MPP) for purchase of bio-ethanol and bio-diesel would be announced with periodic revision.

· Major thrust will be given to research, development and demonstration with focus on plantations, processing and production of bio-fuels, including Second Generation Bio-fuels.

· Financial incentives, including subsidies and grants, may be considered for second generation bio-fuels. If it becomes necessary, a National Bio-fuel Fund could be considered.

· A National Biofuel Coordination Committee, headed by the Prime Minister, will be set up to provide policy guidance and coordination.

· A Biofuel Steering Committee, chaired by Cabinet Secretary, will be set up to oversee implementation of the Policy.

The Ministry of New & Renewable Energy has been designated as the co-ordinating Ministry for biofuel development and utilization while specific roles have been assigned to other concerned Ministries. MNRE has taken several initiatives on various aspects of biofuel development. An exercise has been initiated with scientific agencies – ICAR, CSIR, DBT, DRDO, NOVOD Board on collection, screening and identification of elite germplasms of jatropha and on processing and end use technologies.

The objective is to generate and make available elite planting materials for plantations. The scientific agencies and the private sector have identified 25 superior genotypes/accession s of jatropha for further multiplication for demonstration at various sites in potential States. Another exercise has been taken up on realistic costing of biodiesel which will provide guidance on review and revision of the purchase price for biodiesel.

A survey has been undertaken to assess the status of Jatropha plantations in nine States. Major thrust is being given to development of second generation biofuels. An Indo-US MoU has been signed on biofuels with focus on joint R&D, particularly on second generation biofuels such as, cellulosic ethanol and algal biodiesel. Another initiative with research institutes and industry is on for development of high efficiency engines for use of SVO for stationary applications.

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Save Delhi from Dioxins & GHGs emitting technology for Carbon Credit Project

To,


Mr Rakesh Mehta
Chief Secretary
Government of NCT Delhi
Delhi


Sub: Save Delhi from Dioxins & GHGs emitting technology for Carbon Credit Project

Dear Sir,

This is with reference to the Press Note for the Release of Climate Change Agenda for Delhi 2009-12 prepared by you wherein waste to energy initiatives taken by the Delhi government is mentioned. It has been claimed that the agenda is in line with the Prime MInister's National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC). May I submit that it is not true.

While 'whether or not energy from mixed municipal waste (with hazardous characterstics) is a driving concern' remains in dispute, the fact is that NAPCC is categorically refers to Biomethanation technology, a biological treatment method for waste to energy instead of the Refuse Dervied Fuel (RDF) process which is a incineration technology. http://pmindia.nic.in/Climate%20Change.doc It is a tried, tested, failed and Dioxins emitting technology.

Notably, scientists investigating the effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam have found that people living in the areas where USA had used it as a chemical weapon have the highest blood levels of its poisonous chemical dioxin ever recorded in the country. Agent Orange, which has the dioxin (TCDD - short for 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin) as one of its constituents, was last used in 1973. US military had used it during the Vietnam War but when US veterans started to become ill with a variety of health problems that involvement of Dioxins, a pollutant that stays in the environment for decades came to light. Scientists from the US led by Prof. Arnold Schecter of the University of Texas published his findings wherein he observed that Dioxins causes cancers and problems with reproductive development, the nervous and immune systems.

Since March 2005 when you were the Commissioner, Municipal Corporation Delhi (MCD) and later as Power Secretary, Delhi government, you have been misled into promoting this dubious technology despite incontrovertible evidence against the technology and inspite of its explicit exclusion by NAPCC.

I am an indepedent environmental health researcher and I had discussed the issue of Dioxins emitting technology with you in person at a Round Table in India International Centre as a co-panelist in 2005 in the aftermath of the MOU between MCD and Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Limited (ILFS) to insatll a Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) incineration plant for their waste to energy project. I was an invitee to Supreme Court's Waste to Energy Committee as well.

Unmindful of the environmental and human cost the installation of proposed municipal solid waste (MSW) to energy plants in Ghazipur, Timarpur and Okhla, based on incineration of Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) is being pursued. This has compelled the residents to move to the Delhi High Court and their case W.P.(C) 9901/2009 and CM No. 8154/2009 is being heard by Hon''ble Chief Justice A P Shah and Justice Manmohan Singh. The matter came up for hearing on December 11, 2009 wherein the petitioners (Sukhdev Vihar Residents Welfare Association & others) pointed out the polluting nature of the Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) Incineration technology and how both the central government and the Delhi government has misled the court. The court has now issued notices to the respondents through A.S. Chandhiok, Additional Solicitor General and Shoaib Haider, Advocate for Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi.

I would like to state the concerns about this venture which is fraught with disastrous public health consequnces for which two companies namely, Timarpur-Okhla Waste Management Company (TOWMCL) and the Unique Waste Processing Company (subsidiary of IL&FS Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited have been set up to deal with the waste from South Delhi, North West Delhi and East Delhi.

I wish draw your attention towards the sad plight at waste to energy site in Gandhamguda village in Rangareddy district of Andhra Pradesh (wrongly mentioned as Hyderabad project) which had the same technology. While the RDF incinerator was in operation, the village was covered by a heavy shroud of dark smoke. Originally a pelletisation plant with a furnace, After the plant came up, local doctors started detecting case of problems not found before — skin rashes, asthma, respiratory problems and some cases of stillborns. In a statement, Gandhamguda sarpanch D. Shakuntala had said: ‘‘Everyone in Peerancheru Gram Panchayat and its adjoining regions is now contaminated with harmful pollutants and symptoms are visible in the form of brain fever, vomiting, jaundice, asthma, miscariages, infertility.’’ Similar fate awaits residents of Delhi. For misplaced carbon revenue, it would not be appropriate to turn Delhi residents as guinea pigs.

As you are aware East Delhi Waste Processing Company Private Limited, a special purpose vehicle of the latter compnay is working for generating electricity at the Ghazipur site with the support of the Delhi Government. ‘New Delhi Waste Processing Company Private Limited’ a Joint Venture company of Delhi Government, IL&FS and APTTDC is supporting the project as well. The integrated municipal waste-processing complex is proposed to include a MSW processing plant at Ghazipur to produce Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) along with a power plant of 10 MW capacity where the RDF derived from the waste will be used as fuel to produce electricity. It is supposed to handle an average 1300 tons per day. It claims that 111,949 metric tonnes CO2 equivalent per annum of green house gases would be reduced. The credting period for the project is from 1st November, 2010 to 31 October, 2020.

I wish to draw you specific attention to the Timarpur-Okhla carbon credit project which was registered on 10th November, 2007 with a claim to reduce green house gases to the tune of 262,791 metric tonnes CO2 equivalent per annum. Unique Waste Processing Company, a subsidiary of Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS) and Andhra Pradesh Technology Development Centre (APTDC) has incorporated Timarpur-Okhla Waste Management Company for developing the project for processing municipal waste and also to produce electricity at two locations namely Timarpur and Okhla, at the site at Okhla that is adjacent to defunct Okhla Sewage Treatment Plant (STP). TOWMCL is working with New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and MCD. The Timarpur and Okhla plant will together be processing 650 tonnes per day of MSW at Timarpur site and 1300 tonnes per day of MSW at Okhla and claims to generate 16 MW of electricity.

The Timarpur-Okhla carbon credit project has been met with protest rally from the residents of Gaffar Manzil, Sukhdev Vihar and Hazi Colony together. Local politicians have also pledged their support for the protesters. Over 600 people walked through the colonies in a procession to stage their protest. The proposed plant is located inside dozens of densely populated residential colonies like Harkesh Nagar and Johori Farm, when the policy of the government is to shift or relocate all existing industries whatsoever from the residential areas. Besides this the site is in proximity of hospitals like Holy Family, Fortis-EScorts and Apollo. Inhabitants of colonies like Gaffar Manzil, Sukhdev Vihar and Hazi Colony are rightly alarmed at the prospect of a Dioxins emitting incinerator plant from coming up in their vicinity.

Earlier residents had not allowed the land hand over ceremony for the project that is proposed in the residential area of Okhla but unmindful of the public protest, NDMC had permitted Jindal Urban Infrastructure Ltd to set up this plant. This company has secured a contract from New Delhi Waste Processing Company Limited, a joint venture between the Delhi Government and Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Ltd. (IL&FS), to produce 16 MW power from 2, 000 Metric Tonnes of municipal waste.

Even prior to this following a meeting with the concerned officials where I was also present, a team of Rajendra Kumar, Secretary (Power) and Dr Ajay K Singh, Additional Secretary (Power), Delhi Government that visited the site of the proposed plant which faced angry resident amid uproarious scenes.

Sir, I have working on issues of urban waste and appropriate waste technologies. While we do appreciate the outstanding effort of the your government to make Delhi ecologically sensitive by initiating efforts to for a asbestos free capital and for relief to Silicosis victims. I also appreciate your initiatives such as the release of the Waste Master Plan, 2020 and in the light of the same, I do think that the move underway to install RDF plants in Delhi is an environmentally unsustainable solution. It raises serious concerns about the health and safety of the citizens of Delhi, which we believe such a technology, will jeopardise.

In fact the Master Plan Report (2020) of Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) itself says, ... “RDF is often an option when emission standards are lax and RDF is burned in conventional boilers with no special precautions for emissions.” I am surprised that despite this observation the report then goes on to suggest RDF. I am also surprised to note that the consultants were hired by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which has been central to the Stockholm Convention, and discourages the use of incineration. In fact the MCD report itself says that RDF is another form of incineration.

RDF and incineration

RDF is a thermal and combustion technology, mainly used to prepare waste for mass incineration. The reason for making pellets is to both get the waste in a dry combustible form besides making it ready for those types of incinerators, which can handle RDF. As such all controls which are necessary for incineration need to be in place for RDF, which is not a stand-alone technology, but only another stage for a type of incineration. All such technologies go under various names such as RDF, incineration, pyrolysis, gasification etc.

Needless to say, if mixed waste is burnt, it will create problems of very toxic compounds such as dioxins and furans, heavy metals and other pollutants. The calorific value for the waste comes from materials such as plastics and metals. Plastics, especially chlorinated plastics such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) when combusted gives rise to these highly toxic pollutants. In fact PVC plastic combustion is banned in India by regulation both in the municipal and bio-medical waste handling rules. In the case of hazardous waste India has developed a very stringent standard, which follows the European standard for the Treatment, Storage, and Disposal Facilities (TSDFs).

Toxics are created at various stages of such thermal technologies, and not only at the end of the stack. These can be created during the process, in the stack pipes, as residues in ash, scrubber water and filters, and in fact even in air plumes which leave the stack. There are no safe ways of avoiding their production or destroying these once produced, and at best they can be trapped at extreme cost in sophisticated filters or in the ash. The ultimate release is unavoidable, and if trapped in ash or filters, these then become hazardous wastes themselves. On the other hand other methods of MSW treatment, which are non-thermal and do not create any such problems.

Pelletisation causes special problems. Since pellets, to burn need plastics and paper in them, these when used in household stoves or industrial furnaces which are scattered in communities, release toxics in completely uncontrolled environments to which communities are directly exposed.

Cost concerns

Such technologies cannot be justified either from the point of view of energy generation or for safe waste abatement. For example the cost of a typical 5-mw waste-to-energy project is about Rs 40 crore, with each mw of electricity consuming about 150 tonnes of urban waste. This amounts to an investment of Rs 8 crore per mw, or twice the cost of conventional thermal power. The subsidy alone to sustain such projects, especially for demonstration projects, exceeds 50% of the project cost, an unjustifiable public investment of Rs 20 crore for 800 tonnes of urban waste disposal.

All over the developed world, almost half the investment of their cost is put in emission control systems only to reduce emissions, some of which are very deadly (as mentioned earlier), such as mercury and dioxins and furans, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and heavy metals like lead, cadmium, mercury, that waste incinerators. For example a 2000 MT per day incinerator can cost upwards of USD 500 million in Europe, half of the cost being put into emission control.

Indian garbage has an average calorific value of about 800 cal / kg. For combustion technologies to succeed they would need about 2000 to 3000 cal / kg, other wise auxiliary fuel has to be added. This makes the process more uneconomical and polluting than it already is.

Overall environmental impacts

The impacts of incineration or of RDF are wide. The pollutants which are created, even if trapped (at astronomical expense), reside in filters and ash, which need special landfills for disposal. Besides in case energy recovery is attempted then it requires heat exchangers which operate at temperatures which maximise dioxin production. If the gases are quenched, it goes against energy recovery.

International legislation

At the international level India is party to the Stockholm Convention, which we are on the verge of ratifying. This Convention deals with very toxic chemicals known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs), which include dioxins and furans. These are largely the result of waste combustion or thermal treatment of municipal and medical wastes, especially involving chlorinated plastics such as PVC.

The United States’ Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has evaluated that that incinerator emissions are the primary source of dioxin, and major sources of mercury, lead, arsenic, particulate, and other pollutants. The ash that results from burning trash is even more toxic. These effects have been recognised worldwide.

Inventories of releases of such emissions, such as dioxins, heavy metals etc. have put municipal waste incinerators to be amongst the highest sources of such pollutants worldwide. Of course these are global pollutants but have drastic short term and long-term health effects. Various conventions have stated concerns about this.

The incineration of pellets made from Refuse Derived Fuel (RDF) violates several international laws such as:

a) Kyoto Protocol: As per Annexure A of the Protocol waste incineration is a greenhouse gas emitter.

b) Stockholm Convention on POPs: Calls for improvements in waste management with the aim of the cessation of open and other uncontrolled burning of wastes, including the burning of landfill sites. States that “ when considering proposals to construct new waste disposal facilities, consideration should be given to alternatives such as activities to minimize the generation of municipal and medical waste, including resource recovery, reuse, recycling, waste separation and promoting products that generate less waste. Under this approach, public health concerns should be carefully considered, as per Annexure C of the Convention.”

c) Recommendations of United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)'s Global Assessment on Mercury. The Global Mercury Assessment Working Group recommended measures to address global adverse impacts of mercury at the global, regional, national and local levels. The options include measures such as reducing or eliminating the mercury emission from waste incineration because unlike other heavy metals, mercury has special properties that make it difficult to capture in many control devices.

National legislation

In fact all recent waste policies of the Government of India, which include the Supreme Court’s High Powered Committee report of Urban waste, the Shukla Committee report of the Ministry of Urban Affairs and Employment, as well as the MSW national regulations issued by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, do not recommend the use of incineration.

Further regarding Schedule IV of the Municipal Solid Waste Rules, 2000, it is our understanding that the signatories of the agreement have not sought any approval from the Delhi Pollution Control Board or Central Pollution Control Board, as is mandatory.

The proposed plant is not in line with national legislations and guidelines such as:

a) MSW Rules, 2000 because according to the MSW Rules it is illegal to incinerate chlorinated plastics (like PVC) and wastes chemically treated with any chlorinated disinfectant. The reason to ban incineration of chlorinated products is to stop formation and emission of dioxins, one of the most toxic substances known to human beings.

b) Recommendations of the Supreme Court constituted committee on waste management. The Burman Committee recommended that composting should be carried out in each municipality. Local bodies are cautioned not to adopt expensive technologies of power generation, fuel pelletisation, incineration, etc until they are proven under Indian conditions.

c) Delhi High Court order because the court had directed the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) to conduct an inquiry into the failure of the Timarpur plant. The high court order came in response to a public interest litigation (PIL) filed in 2000 by B L Wadhera.

d) MCD’s own Feasibility Study and Master Plan for Optimal Waste Treatment and Disposal for the Entire State of Delhi of March 2004 because it says, “Incineration of RDF is considered waste incineration.” (Page 25, Appendix D, Technology Catalogue). It also says the costs of RDF are often high for societies with low calorific value because energy is used to dry the waste before it becomes feasible to burn it.

e) ‘White Paper on Pollution in Delhi with an Action Plan’ prepared by Union Ministry of Environment and Forests. It says, “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.”

Health impacts and concerns

Based on the appraisal of all the sources of pollutants, the pathways of exposure and the receptors, it has been found that the technology, which is being, suggested increases pollution in air, water and land leading to food chain contamination and disease hazards. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that incineration is a cause of ill-health:

a) Although communities living in the immediate vicinity of incinerators are most at risk from the emissions, explosions etc., the contamination is not restricted to a specific locality.

b) Test have shown areas as far as 1,000 miles are impacted directly by the chemical particulates, metals, dioxin, products of incomplete combustion etc., from it. Every resident of Delhi in particular would be exposed to the toxins emitted by incinerators via the food chain through fish, milk and other dairy produce.

c) Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) have recognised long term toxic effects, which transfer from one generation to another, through mother’s breast milk, and at extremely low and minute exposures. These are global pollutants.

d) What is of grave concern to civil society groups, doctors and scientists is that the womb offers little protection to the unborn child as many of these chemicals can pass through the placental wall and interfere with hormone behaviour during foetal development.

e) Even breast fed infants would be affected as its by-products also contaminate their mother’s milk. By installing such a technology the citizenry stand at great risk of such contamination and health effects.

Concerns about recycling

The installation of these technologies, which combust or thermally change materials which are otherwise being recycled, goes against the whole ethos of recycling. Hundreds of thousands of people seek their livelihood through recycling in India. Approaches to waste management should lead to socially acceptable solutions and helping already marginalized sectors.

Alternatives

Also from our understanding, RDF or incineration is completely inappropriate for Indian urban waste, which is largely biodegradable in nature, but also that they ext5ract a very high cost for the energy which they claim to generate. The cost, which is largely subsidised by various schemes, does not however include the environmental and health costs caused by their toxic releases, and which are externalised. These technologies also use valuable resources which can be recycled, such as plastics and metals, and which support a massive recycling sector in the country. On the other hand Indian municipal waste is fit for composting and bio-methanation treatment processes.

In fact we feel that such high cost routes must be avoided and instead only appropriate methods such as bio-methanation, composting and proper recycling propagated. Incentives and subsidies should be offered in areas of `cold’ technologies alone, which are suited to our country economically, socially and also to our wastes.

Therefore, adopting alternative cleaner methods of waste disposal is deemed sane and sustainable. The need for low-cost solutions presents significant difficulties, but it is not an impossible task. The ideal resource management strategy for MSW is to avoid its generation in the first place. This implies changing production and consumption patterns to eliminate the use of disposable, non-reusable, non-returnable products and packaging.

The alternative waste disposal methods include:

i. Waste reduction
ii. Waste segregation
iii. Reuse and extended use
iv. Recycling
v. Bio-methanation technology
vi. Composting
vii. Vermicomposting

In the light of the above it is advisable to discard any proposal, which does not adopt any of the above-mentioned methods to dispose of Indian urban wastes. I would be happy to provide you information or clarification on this issue.

Thanking you,

Yours faithfully,

Gopal Krishna
New Delhi
Mb: 9818089660
Skype id: witnesskrishna
E-mail: krishnagreen@gmail.com
Blog: toxicswatch.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/krishnagreen

Cc:
1. Chief Minister, Government of National Capital Territory (NCT) Delhi
2. Lt Governor, National Capital Territory (NCT) Delhi
3. Chairman, Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB)
4. Union Minister for Science and Technology
5. Union Minister for New & Renewable Energy
6. Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission
7. Secretary, Union Ministry for Science and Technology
8. Sunita Narain, Member, Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change
9. Member Secretary, Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB)
10. Member Secrectary, National CDM Authority/Designated National Authority (DNA), Union
Ministry of Environment and Forests

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IPCC & TERI Promote Polluting Incineration Technology

Waste Incineration Techniology Violates Kyoto Protocol

Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi has announced an action plan comprising 65 specific actions to address climate change as part of the State's development policy framework by 2012, which is aligned with the country's National Action Plan on Climate Change.

Not surprisingly, the Press Note for the Release of Climate Change Agenda for Delhi 2009-12 notes that Chief Secretary (Rakesh Mehta) has prepared this agenda wherein he refers to waste to energy initiatives taken by the Delhi government. It has been claimed that the agenda is in line with the Prime MInister's National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC). The fact is that NAPCC is categorically refers to Biomethanation technology, a biological treatment method for waste to energy instead of the Refuse Dervied Fuel(RDF) process which is a incineration technology.

There is a flawed text in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) saying, that IPCC recommends it.
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg3/index.php?idp=120
which reads:"3.7.2.4 Incineration

Incineration is common in the industrialized regions of Europe, Japan and the northeastern USA where space limitations, high land costs, and political opposition to locating landfills in communities limit land disposal. In developing countries, low land and labour costs, the lack of high heat value materials such as paper and plastic in the waste stream, and the high capital cost of incinerators have discouraged waste combustion as an option.

Waste-to-energy (WTE) plants create heat and electricity from burning mixed solid waste. Because of high corrosion in the boilers, the steam temperature in WTE plants is less than 400 degrees Celsius. As a result, total system efficiency of WTE plants is only between 12%–24% (Faaij et al., 1998; US EPA, 1998; Swithenbank and Nasserzadeh, 1997).

Net GHG emissions from WTE facilities are usually low and comparable to those from biomass energy systems, because electricity and heat are generated largely from photosynthetically produced paper, yard waste, and organic garbage rather than from fossil fuels. Only the combustion of fossil fuel based waste such as plastics and synthetic fabrics contribute to net GHG releases, but recycling of these materials generally produces even lower emissions."

Notably, India is a party to Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) which calls for elimination POPs (Dioxins) emitting technologies like incineration. This is despite the fact that Annexure A of the Kyoto Protocol clarly says that waste incineration is a source of green house gases.

Incineration is a source of POPs like dioxins, furans, PCBs, toxic metals and other toxic particles besides greenhouse gases.

Waste incineration systems including Refuse Dervied Fuel(RDF) or waste pelletisation, pyrolysis and gasification systems) produce pollutants that are detrimental to both human health and the environment. They are expensive and do not eliminate or even adequately control toxic emissions from today's chemically complex waste. Even new incinerators release toxic metals, dioxins and acid gases. Far from eliminating the problem of landfills, waste incinerator systems produce toxic ash and other residues. They release incinerator ash into the environment, which subsequently enters the foodchain.

Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE)'s waste-to-energy programme to maximise energy recovery is technologically incompatible with reducing dioxin emissions. Dioxins are lethal Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) that cause irreparable environmental and health damage.

Incinerator technology intervention in the waste stream distorts waste management. Such systems rely on minimum guaranteed waste flows. They indirectly promote waste generation, whilst hindering waste prevention, reuse, composting, recycling and recycling-based community economic development. Such systems cost cities and municipalities more, and provide fewer jobs than do comprehensive recycling and composting schemes. They prohibit the development of local recycling-based industry.

Waste-to-energy projects are being promoted in manifest violation of international environmental norms. Incineration of waste also violates the Stockholm Convention on POPs which calls for improvements in waste management with the aim of stopping the open and uncontrolled burning of waste. It violates the recommendations of the United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP's) Global Assessment on Mercury which includes measures aimed at reducing or eliminating mercury emissions from waste incineration, because, unlike other heavy metals, mercury has special properties that make it difficult to capture in many control devices. It violates the Dhaka Declaration on Waste Management adopted by the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) in October 2004. According to this declaration, SAARC countries cannot opt for incineration and other unproven technologies.

It also goes against national legislation and norms such as the Municipal Solid Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2000, according to which it is illegal to incinerate chlorinated plastics (like PVC) and waste that's been chemically treated with a chlorinated disinfectant. And it ignores the recommendations of the Supreme Court-constituted committee on waste management.

According to the 'White Paper on Pollution in Delhi with an Action Plan', prepared by the MoEF: "The experiences 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."

It is therefore incumbent upon India's policymakers to exclude waste, waste resources, waste pelletisation, waste incineration, pyrolysis and gasification technologies from qualifying as renewable energy/fuel sources and to stop offering renewable energy subsidies/loans for burn-technology-based waste-to-energy programmes and policies. The high-cost routes must be avoided. Instead, appropriate methods such as small-scale bio-methanation, composting and proper recycling should be propagated.

Waste incineration poses serious risks to human health and the environment. It also violates international environmental norms. But the government continues to experiment with burn-technologies and waste-to-energy programmes, ignoring cheaper and safer alternatives

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Comprehensive Environmental Assessment of Industrial Clusters

The Ministry and the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) on 24 December released a 32 page study that for the first time calculates a Comprehensive Environmental Pollution Index (CEPI) for 88 key industrial clusters in India, using a series of objective criteria. Minister Jairam Ramesh, while releasing the report prepared by IIT Delhi, emphasized that the assessment must serve as a basis for enhanced and urgent action, especially in those clusters that are critically polluted.

In the Foreword to the study, Prof. S P Gautam, Chairman, CPCB wrote, "A Comprehensive Environmental Pollution Index (CEPI), which is a rational number to characterize
the environmental quality at a given location following the algorithm of source, pathway and
receptor have been developed. The index captures the various health dimensions of environment
including air, water and land. The present CEPI is intended to act as an early warning tool, which is handy to use. It can help in categorizing the industrial clusters/areas in terms of priority of planning needs for interventions. The process of evolution of method and mechanisms that yielded results are dynamic in nature. Improvements and alterations for enhancing more efficiency will be a continuous task."

He noted that the application of CEPI in 88 selected industrial clusters/areas has been an exercise involving Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), Concerned State Pollution Control Boards/ Pollution Control Committees, and IIT Delhi. The effective implementation of the remedial action plan will help in pollution abatement and to restore the environmental quality of respective industrial clusters. The polluted industrial clusters/areas shall be further explored in order to define the spatial boundaries as well as the extent of eco-geological damages. The outcome shall be subjected to structured consultation with the stakeholders for determining comparative effectiveness of alternative plans and policies. The preparation of effective remedial action plan will yield desired results in terms of sustainable use of the carrying capacity of the respective industrial cluster/ area.

The analysis shows that there are 43 industrial areas/clusters out of the 88 are found to be critically polluted, with respect to one or more environmental component.

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Goa Villagers & Actvists Against Syngenta Plant

Conflict between tribal people living in the villages of Corlim, Goa and Mangado Syngenta Santa Monica Pesticide company -a Swiss corporation- and its product a pesticide named, Monocrotophos. The company stands acuused of ‘industrial racism’. Activists in Goa say that the company took over tribal land soon after Indian army action ‘operation Vijay’ ‘Liberated’ Goa on December 19, 1961. Syngenta is located on the banks of Cumbarjua canal. The canal connects Goa’s two biggest rivers Mandovi and Zuari.

Syngenta has violated the Indian laws in production of Monocrotophos in Goa. The media communications released from Syngenta’s last predecessor Norartis in Basel in February 1998 there was change in priorities in production of certain pesticides. Amongst pesticides that were decided to be replaced on country-by-country basis included dichlorvos, disulfoton, formothion, isazofos, monocrotophos and phosphamidon. So monocrotophos was clearly listed to be replaced then.

Syngenta's product Monocrotophos is an organophosphorus insecticide and acaricide which works systemically and on contact tt is extremely toxic to birds and is used as a bird poison. It is also very poisonous to mammals. It is used to control a variety of sucking, chewing and boring insects and spider mites on cotton, sugarcane, peanuts, ornamentals, and tobacco. The USEPA classifies monocrotophos as a class I toxicity - highly toxic. Products containing monocrotophos bear the Signal Word "Danger". Monocrotophos is available in other countries as a soluble concentrate or an ultra-low volume spray.

The plant started on 24th January 1969, when Ciba of India Limited (known now as Syngenta) purchased 200 acres of land from the President of India to for Ciba to establish an industrial complex.

The land was sold at a price of twenty five paise per square meter, the final sale of land equated to the total value of Rupees One Lakh eighty eight thousand four hundred and sixty (Rs 180460). The contract of sale transferred ownership of the land and included the buildings, yards, courts, fences, wells, sewers, drains and watercourses.

The land purchased by Syngenta the cultivation field for the villagers who used the Cumbarjua canal that flowed for their crops and for fish.

The illiterate tribals of Corlim and and Mangado were given Rs 200 as compensation with no legal documents to prove their ownership of land which has been traced to at least 18th century with the help of oral narratives.

Syngenta has created a 12 acre man made lake by closing the two sluice gates at the Cumbarjua canal, which has affected the natural water flow and created flooding in both villages.

Villagers are complaning of respiratory disorders and link it to the pollution caused by the Syngenta factory. The long term health and environmental impact of the plant merits immediate attention.

Goa Pollution Control Board does not have air testing facilities and it relies on the air testing laboratory of Syngenta.

Air sampling done through bucket brigade of Community Environment Monitoring based in Chennai found very alarming results. On 7th August 2008 air samples were collected from very close vicinity of Syngenta when smell was experienced. It was packed and sent to Columbia Analytical Services, Inc., laboratory approved by United States Environment Protection Agency (USEPA). Its tests proved prevalence of large number of chemicals that are hazardous to human health. Hydrogen Sulphide was found 17 times above safe limits. It targets eyes, respiratory system, and central nervous system. Carbon Disulphide was found 15 times above safe limits. It targets central nervous system, peripheral nervous system, cardiovascular system, eyes, kidneys, liver, skin, and reproductive system. Carbonyl Sulphide was found 33.75 times above safe limits.

The plant is located in the thickly populated areas and is one of the two classified hazardous chemical plants in Goa. It disposed of its solid hazardous waste in the village of Darbandora in Sanguem taluka till 2008 when the village Panchayat objected and Syngenta stooped dumping. It then created its own landfill site within the campus of the factory ‘temporarily’ until then corporate gets permissions from authorities in Karnataka to dump this hazardous waste inside its territory. This involves transportation of hazardous waste chemicals though the use of highway that connects Syngenta location.

It sources its large quantity of water from Public Works department (PWD) almost 3000 cubic meters every day.

According to the Environment Clearnce granted to Syngenta in October 2008, pesticides manufactured at the plant includes Thiomethoxam (TMX-I), Thiomethoxam (TMX-II), Pretilachlor, Monocrotophos, Cuman/Ziram, Profenofos, Amino Ethyl Phenol (Intermediate), Mandipropamid Technical, and Ortho – Substituted Phenyl Amide Tech (OPA).

In recen times local communities and concerned citizens have been protesting since February 29, 2008 when the Public hearing was conducted for the expansion of pesticides production capacity at the Syngenta site in Goa.

According to EXTOXNET – Extension Toxicology Network – based in Oregon State University, Pesticide Information Profile of Monocrotophos is revealing. Syngenta’s predecessor – Ciba: its agricultural division was a basic manufacturer of this infamous pesticide. It carried various trade names such as Trade names for products containing monocrotophos include Azodrin, Bilobran, Crisodrin, Monocil 40, Monocron, Nuvacron, Pillardrin, and Plantdrin.

The use of monocrotophos on potatoes and tomatoes was withdrawn in 1985 in USA and all applications of monocrotophos were discontinued in the United States in 1988. Before its withdrawal, monocrotophos was a Restricted Use Pesticide (RUP).

Health Effects of Monocrotophos

Acute Toxicity: Monocrotophos is a direct acting cholinesterase inhibitor capable of penetration through the skin. The dose which kills half of the test animals, the LD50, is 17-18 mg/kg for male rats and 20 mg/kg for female rats. The LD50 for dermal exposure is 126 mg/kg for male rats, 112 mg/kg for female rats, and 354 mg/kg for rabbits. The concentration in air at which half of the test animals die, the LC50, is 0.8 mg/l air. Monocrotophos is not irritating to skin and eyes. Symptoms of monocrotophos poisoning are similar to those of other organophosphate compounds. Its cholinesterase inhibiting activity causes nervous system effects. Cases of human poisoning are characterized by muscular weakness, blurred vision, profuse perspiration, confusion, vomiting, pain, and small pupils. There is a risk of death due to respiratory failure.

Reproductive Effects: Rats who received doses of 2 mg/kg/day monocrotophos produced fetuses with lower than average length and weight.

Mutagenic Effects: Studies show that monocrotophos may be weakly mutagenic.

Organ Toxicity: Monocrotophos affects the central nervous system by inhibiting cholinesterase, an enzyme essential for normal nerve impulse transmission.

Fate in Humans and Animals: Monocrotophos is metabolized and excreted rapidly and does not appear to accumulate within the body. In mammals, 60-65% is excreted within 24 hours, predominantly in the urine.

Effects on Birds: Monocrotophos is highly toxic to birds. The LD50 is 0.76 mg/kg for California quail, 0.94 mg/kg for bobwhite quail, 1.58 mg/kg for Canada goose, 3.3 mg/kg for European starling and 4.76 mg/kg for mallard ducks.

Effects on Aquatic Organisms: Monocrotophos is moderately toxic to fish. The LC50 (48hrs) is 7 mg/l for rainbow trout and 23 mg/l for bluegill sunfish. Monocrotophos causes reproductive damage to crustaceans exposed for long periods of time.

Effects on Other Animals (Non-target species): Monocrotophos is highly toxic to bees. It may also kill non-target birds which eat insects poisoned with monocrotophos.

Breakdown of Chemical in Soil and Groundwater: Monocrotophos has a low environmental persistence. It does not accumulate in soil because it is biodegradable. Its half-life is less than 7 days in soil exposed to natural sunlight.

Breakdown of Chemical in Vegetation: Monocrotophos has a half-life of 1.3 to 3.4 days on plant foliage. It causes slight injury to some varieties of apple, pear, cherry, peach and sorghum.

Syngenta’s Rapid Environment Impact Assessment (REIA) submitted for public circulation through Goa State Pollution Control Board in Early 2008 when it was preparing for Public Hearing for expansion mentions Monocrotophos not less than 14 times. Here is the list:

1. On Chapter II page 18 it mentions total capacity of Monocrotophos production as 1500 TPA. It also states “Monocrotophos is manufactured by Chlorinating MMA (Monomethyl aceto acetamide) in the presence of Urea. The chlorinated mixture is neutralized with sodium hydroxide (Caustic Soda). The chlorinated slurry is then dissolved in DCE (Di chloro ethane). This material is then reacted with TMP (Tri methyl phosphate) to get Monocrotophos.”
2. On Page 19 Figure 2.4 there is given process flow diagram of Monocrotophos.
3. Monocrotophos is listed in the table 2.2 dealing with Evaluation of ETP performance of summer 2005. This is an evidence of the production of Monocrotophos in 2005.
4. Monocrotophos along with Phosphomidon is listed in table 3.3 dealing with analysis of soil sample near hazardous waste storage site within the manufacturing Plant.
5. Again both Monocrotophos as well as Phosphomidon are listed in table 3.6 dealing with Analysis of soil sample near HW Disposal site.
6. Monocrotophos and Phosphomidon are listed in the table 3.15 dealing with ground water quality monitoring.
7. Monocrotophos and Phosphomidon are again listed in table 3.17 dealing with surface water quality monitoring.
8. Monocrotophos as well as Phosphomidon are included in Table 3.18 dealing with Sediment Samples.
9. In project executive summery there is an entry 4.0 as Monocrotophos production being 1500 Tonnes Per Annum (TPA) production under the table 1.0 dealing with Products manufactured at Santa Monica Works, Corlim. The other entries includes Profenos with 1500 TPA, Thiamethoxam with 2800 TPA, Pretilachlor 1400 TPA, Cuman/Ziram 1400 TPA, Liquid and Powder Formulation as 8700 TPA. So clearly Monocrotophos is listed as being one of the products manufactured.
10. In the annexures Table 2.2 with the heading “Evaluation of ETP Performance” includes Monocrotophos.
11. In annexures table 3.3 with heading “analysis of soil sample near Hazardous Waste storage site within the manufacturing plant”, Monocorphos as well Phosphomidon finds entries.
12. In annexures table 3.4 with heading “analysis of soil sample near H W disposal site”, both Monocrotophos as well as Phosphomedon is included.
13. In annexures table 3.15 with heading “Ground water quality monitoring”, Monocrotophos as well as Phosphomedon are listed.
14. In annexures table 3.15 with heading “Surface water quality monitoring” Monocrotophos as well as Phosphomidon are listed.

Besides records in REIA prepared by Syngenta proving ongoing production of Monocrotophos there are additional documents to point this out further. Consent to establish provided to Syngenta under Air Act and Water Act by Goa State Pollution Control Board on 2nd May 2007 clearly states “Reduction of Monocrotophos from 2800 TPA to 1500 TPA. This letter also mentions increase in production of Thiamethoxam from 1400 TPA to 2500 TPA. So clearly intention of Syngenta has only to reduce the production of monocrotophos and not to stop production as per these records in 2007.

Further, Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) issued Environment Clearance to produce Monocrotophos amongst other pesticides as mentioned earlier as late as October 30, 2008.

Despite all this evidence of actual on ground production of Monocrotophos at its Santa Monica plant, Corlim, Goa, Syngenta has been on the public denial mode for the reasons best known to the company. The first denial came towards fag end of Public Hearing on 29th February 2008 from Rajiv Aunde, a representative of M/s Tera. “The company has stopped production of Monocrotophos.” He did not mention as to from when the Monocrotophos production is stopped. Even if it was stopped from that very day of 29th February 2008 then how come MoEF Environmental Clearance of 30th October 2008 – full eight months later mentions Monocrotophos? Surely either Syngenta has been fooling public in Goa or MoEF is constituted of bunch of fools!

This was a response to the tremendous opposition publicly voiced towards monocrotophos production site at Syngenta. The public hearing that started at 11.00 am ended at 7.30 pm. Amongst those who citied Monocrotophos as objectionable pesticide manufactured at Syngenta includes Durgadas Gaonkar, president of Gawda, Kunbi, Velip and Dhangar Federation (GAKUVED) and resident of village adjacent to Syngenta towards the East – Dhulapi that has lost its land to the corporate, and Deepak Karmalkar, a resident of Old Goa that is within the risk zone of Syngenta. One speaker Pandurang Kukalkar, Secretary of Gawda, Kunbi, Velip and Dhangar Federation (GAKUVED) pointed out that the famous Syngenta lake is artificial lake imposed on the paddy fields of the local people from Dhulapi and Mangado.

The second denial on Monocrotophos came on 7th December 2008 in newspaper in Goa – Herald – with a heading “Syngenta refutes charges of manufacturing banned chemicals”. The crucial details from this news report as follows: “Syngenta, the chemical plant based at Corlim, Ilhas, which has been accused of manufacturing banned chemicals claimed that it had stopped the manufacture of Monocrotophos, an organophosphate insecticide, banished in the US and many other countries.

A clarification issued by the Company’s Vice President – Manufacturing Operations Vishram Singbal states that Syngenta does not produce any chemicals banned in the US or European countries and it had stopped manufacturing monocrotophos in 2001.” Syngenta vice president made this statement two months after getting Environmental Clearance from MoEF on 30th October 2008 to keep its existing production capacity of 1500 TPA as it is. Mr. Singbal’s denials can come only from a wise fool who believes that he is speaking to the audience in the classroom hall consisting standard V school boys with mental capacity equivalent to morons!

In the order of the National Environment Appellate Authority in appeal number 4/2009 dated 12th August 2009 – Durga Das Ganu Gaonkar & others Vs Ministry of Environment and Forests and Others – there are some interesting material and the third denial on monocrotophos production. The order states “the procedure of chemicals like phosphomidon and monocrotophos have been stopped and they are no longer in production line….As regards the chemical named TMP (Trimethyle Phosphite) which causes the bad odour, it has been clarified that “TMP” was used/required in manufacture of Monocrotophos. As the production of Monocrotophos has been discontinued in the plant from 1997 the use of TMP has also been discontinued at the plant.”

Over here Syngenta submitted that Monocrotophos production was stooped from 1997. In Herald report it submitted that it stopped from 2001. There is no consistency on since when it actually stopped production. While decision to substitute monocrotophos was taken in the company’s Basel office on country by country basis in 1998.

It is noteworthy that in spite of all the available Monocrotophos pesticide profile Government of India has not banned its production in the country so far. Phosphamidon is another pesticides that was listed to be replaced but continued to be produced in Goa with Syngenta.

Source: http://mandgoa.blogspot.com/2009/11/syngentas-hide-n-seek-with.html

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Full text of the Copenhagen 'Accord'

The system of international treaty making in the post second world war era has not changed since the days of the Opium Wars (1857-58) in which China, India and Western countries were involved. The task to get a legally binding agreement has now shifted to Mexico City in a years time. Indeed a 10 billion dollars per year allocation has ensured a carbon market worth $1.2 trillion per year.
Whatever has remained in climate talks is because of this market. Clearly, when rich talks about climate its about commerce and not about golden hearted environmentalism. UN climate talks are going the same way as WTO talks.

See the official full text of the Copenhagen Accord
http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/cop15/eng/l07.pdf

Barack Obama spurned Europe and the poor countries of the world and attempted to form a league of super-polluters, and would-be super-polluters. Sudanese delegate Lumumba Di-Aping who is the Chair of the G77 group of countries compared the agreement to the Holocaust. He said the deal "asked Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries. This is devoid of any sense of responsibility, morality and it is a solution based on the values, the very values which in our opinion channelled six million people in Europe into furnaces. This deal will definitely result in massive devastation in Africa and small island states," he said. "It has the lowest level of ambition you can imagine. It's nothing short of climate change Scepticism in action. It locks countries into a cycle of poverty for ever. Obama has eliminated any difference between him and Bush. The developed countries have decided that damage to developing countries is acceptable.

Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary General told the final session: "I know that most developed and developing countries, they are not all happy but I believe that through this adoption of the Copenhagen Accord you will be able to get everything you need." It seals a commitment to limit global temperatures rises to no more than 2 degrees Celcius but fixes no firm targets to do that. Notably, most countries wanted 1.5 degree C target.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) looked forward to the next major meeting in this series, CoP 16 he said: "I think we've got to achieve in Mexico what we failed to achieve here" at Cop 15.

The continuation of the Kyoto Protocol and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has been confirmed. Developed countries commit collectively to providing US$30 billion in new, additional funding for developing countries for the 2010-2012 period.

Key Parts:

2 degrees C: We agree that deep cuts in global emissions are required according to science, and as documented by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report with a view to reduce global emissions so as to hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius, and take action to meet this objective consistent with science and on the basis of equity.

Memorializing rich country specific reductions: Annex I Parties commit to implement individually or jointly the quantified economywide emissions targets for 2020, to be submitted in the format given in Appendix I by Annex I Parties to the secretariat by 31 January 2010 for compilation in an INF document.

Memorializing rich country specific actions: Non-Annex I Parties to the Convention will implement mitigation actions, including those to be submitted to the secretariat by non-Annex I Parties in the format given in Appendix II by 31 January 2010, for compilation in an INF document, consistent with Article 4.1 and Article 4.7 and in the context of sustainable development. Those mitigation actions in national communications or otherwise communicated to the Secretariat will be added to the list in appendix II. Mitigation actions taken by Non-Annex I Parties will be subject to their domestic measurement, reporting and verification the result of which will be reported through their national communications every two years.

Copenhagen Green Climate Fund $30 billion then $100 billion: The collective commitment by developed countries is to provide new and additional resources, including forestry and investments through international institutions, approaching USD 30 billion for the period 2010 to 2012 with balanced allocation between adaptation and mitigation.

Copenhagen Green Climate Fund: Copenhagen Green Climate Fund : The commitment by developed countries is to provide new and additional resources, including forestry and investments through international institutions, approaching USD 30 billion for the period 2010 – 2012 with balanced allocation between adaptation and mitigation.'

1.5 degrees C: We call for an assessment of the implementation of this Accord to be completed by 2015, including in light of the Convention's ultimate objective. This would include consideration of strengthening the long-term goal referencing various matters presented by the science, including in relation to temperature rises of 1.5 degrees Celsius

The earlier 2050 goal of reducing global CO2 emissions by 80% has been deleted from the final draft. The accord promised about $30-billion in funding in 3 years for poor countries to adapt to climate change will commence next year and mobilization of $100-billion a year after 2020.

GIVEN BELOW IS THE SPEECH OF MR. JAIRAM RAMESH, MINISTER OF STATE (INDEPENDENT CHARGE) FOR ENVIRONMENT & FORESTS, GOVERNMENT OF INDIA, AT THE HIGH-LEVEL SEGMENT OF THE UN CLIMATE CONFERENCE, COPENHAGEN ON 16 DECEMBER 2009

Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies & Gentlemen, It is my privilege to speak on behalf of the Government of India. We continue to derive inspiration from the Father of our nation, Mahatma Gandhi who is an icon for the environmental movement everywhere. India is already and will be even more profoundly impacted by climate change.

In many ways, we have the highest vulnerability on multiple dimensions. We have a tremendous
obligation to our own people by way of both adaptation and mitigation policies and programmes. That is why we have already announced a number of ambitious measures proactively.

We have a detailed national action plan on climate change with eight focused national missions and twenty four critical initiatives. Under this plan, we have already launched a solar energy mission aimed at 20,000 Mw by 2022 and a domestic market-based mechanism for further stimulating energy
efficiency in industry. Other national missions for accelerating afforestation, for promoting sustainable habitats, for expanding sustainable agriculture and for protecting the
crucial Himalayan ecosystem are on the anvil. New GHG emission-reducing technologies in coal-based power generation are being deployed on a large-scale. Mandatory fuel efficiency standards in the transport sector will soon become a reality.

We have established our own version of an IPCC comprising more than 120 of our leading scientific and technological institutions to continuously measure, monitor and model the impacts of climate change on different sectors and in different regions of our country. In addition to establishing a nation-wide climate observatory network, we are going to launch our own satellite in 2011 to monitor GHG and aerosol emissions globally.

Derived from our detailed National Action Plan on Climate Change, we are now considering nationally accountable mitigation outcomes in different sectors like industry, energy, transport, building and forests. Over the last decade we have added over 3 million hectares to our forest cover and today our forest cover is sequestering close to 10% of our annual greenhouse gas emissions. We will endeavour to maintain that level.

India has been a major participant in the CDM. If all our projects are approved and implemented as scheduled by 2012, carbon credits amounting to a further 10% of our annual GHG emissions will be available to developed countries to enable them to meet their KP commitments.

We are convinced that a low-carbon strategy is an essential aspect of sustainable development. While we already have one of the lowest emissions intensity of the economy, we will do more. We are targeting a further emissions intensity decline of 20-25% by 2020 on 2005 levels. This is significant given our huge developmental imperatives.

Deeply conscious of our international responsibilities as well, we have already declared that our per capita emissions will never exceed the per capita emissions of the developed countries. We have recently unveiled projected GHG emissions profiles till the year 2030.

Aware of the need for enhanced transparency, we have suggested using the National Communication process, in a format and frequency to be agreed to, as a mechanism to reflect internationally the nature and impact of actions taken domestically. Let me add here that India has probably the most rigorous MRV system that any government can go through – with its democratic Parliament, activist judiciary, vigilant NGOs and watchful media.

We are transforming environmental governance systems. A judicial National Green Tribunal and an executive National Environmental Protection Agency is on the anvil. We have just announced a new generation of national ambient air quality standards that is on par with the strictest in the world.

Our entire approach to this Conference is anchored in the sanctity of the troika--the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol and the Bali Action Plan. We believe that the well-known and widely accepted principles of (i) common but differentiated responsibility; and (ii) historical responsibilities are acrosanct.

As a global goal, India subscribes to the view that the temperature increase ought not to exceed 2 degrees Celsius by 2050 from mid-19th century levels. But this objective must be firmly embedded in a demonstrably equitable access to atmospheric space, with adequate finance and technology
available to all developing countries.

Excellencies, one of the two heads of state to address the first UN Conference on the Environment held in Stockholm thirty seven years back was Mrs. Indira Gandhi – the other being the host Prime Minister. What she said on the historic occasion brought the development agenda into the mainstream of the discourse on environmental concerns. We recall that message and reiterate our resolve to be integral part of the solution to global warming—now and always.
*****

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