Pakistan's environmentalists say no to dumping of obsolete and hazardous technology by the West
No entry to Dutch plant
FOR the first time in Pakistan, public
pressure has given industry notice that it
cannot remain free from its environmental responsibility.
A heady new sense of confidence is
in evidence among Pakistan's environmentalists, ever since a 9-month campaign concluded successfully last November. The fall-out of the battle: a
move to import a mercury cell-based
chlor-alkali plant from Denmark has
been halted in its tracks. Instead, the
importing unit, Ravi Alkalis, has been
forced to settle for the relatively safer
membrane cell technology.
With this, Pakistan's fledgling environmental movement is poised to take
wing. The campaign, an important
milestone for environmentalists, has
alerted Pakistani NGOS to the virtual
non-existence of effective national and
international environmental laws and mechanisms.
Pakistan's laws governing industrial
pollution are hopelessly antiquated.
Most of the air and water quality acts
were promulgated either pre-Partition
or in the '60s. Even the latest environmental act which seeks to. regulate
industrial emissions-the 1983 Pakistan
Environmental Protection Ordinance-lacked teeth for a long time.
The key concern of environmentalists is the need for revision of the
national environmental quality standards and making them more industry
specific, or establishing ambient quality
standards. Similarly, - though the
Environmental Protection Agencies
(EPAS) have begun functioning, they do
not have the ability to monitor environmental compliance by industry because
of lack of technical expertise.
Pakistan's glaring record of environmental laxity had made it an ideal site for Dansk Sojakagen (DS) Industries of
Copenhagen, Denmark, to send its old
chlor-alkali factory. The DS plant, built
on Islands Brygge in Copenhagen in
1935, had an abysmal environmental
track record. It was alleged to have
dumped around 50 tonnes of mercury
into the Copenhagen harbour -
with the consequence that fishing
is still prohibited in the Greater
Copenhagen coastal areas. The factory
had also caused much hardship to the people of Islands Brygge who were for bidden to grow vegetables because mercury emissions from the plant had contaminated the soil in areas adjoining the factory.
A red-alert was sounded when the
Pakistani NGO, Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), received
news from Greenpeace International
about the imminent transfer of this
plant on March 28, 1994. In its tip-off to
the SDPI, the international environmental organisation warned that the mercury cell technology was the "oldest and
dirtiest" of the 3 major technologies for
chlor-alkali production. It had already
been discredited worldwide on accouni
of numerous health hazards associated
with mercury poisoning, such as nervous disorders, nightmares and insanity. In western Europe, the havoc
wreaked by mercury clontarnination
had led to a decision'-by all Paris
Commission countries (including
Denmark) to phase out the mercury cell technology.
Chlorine, as Greenpeace pointed
out, was also under severe attack the
world over for possible ill effects such as
cancer, birth defects and liver damage.
"In the long run, we believe all production and use of chlorine will be phased
out. Meanwhile, the transfer of this
notoriously dirty technology and equipmerit for chlorine production to
Pakistan is precisely the wrong kind of
technology transfer for the POST-UNCED
(United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development) period," warnedKenny Bruno, a toxic tech-
nology transfer expert with Greenpeace in New York.
Soon after the news of the transfer
was made public in both the countries,
SDPI, Greenpeace and several Pakistani
and Danish NGOS launched a campaign
to halt the shipment. The Copenhagen
Environmental Protection Agency
(CEPA) categorised the equipment as
chemical waste in March 1994, in the
hope that under the Basel Convention-which prohibits the export of
hazardous waste from the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) countries to non-
OECD countries-it would not be
allowed to leave Denmark. Adding her
voice to the opposition, Charlotte
Ammundsen, the mayor responsible for
the environment in Copenhagen said: "I
think that reconstructing the plant for
chlorine production is a problem in
itself. If the old plant is to be operated by
people who do not know it well, there
are considerable risks of discharge of
both mercury and chlorine."
Much to the dismay of environmentalists in Pakistan and Denmark, a
loophole in the Danish law was
exploited to the hilt by DS Industries
and Ravi Alkalis-whose name was
uncovered by Greenpeace-to push
through the transaction. Under Danish,
law, a facility cannot be classified as
hazardous waste if it is demonstrated
that it can be reassembled for production purposes.
CEPA, therefore, found its hands tied
when DS Industries demonstrated that
the sale would lead to resumption of
production. Confronted with documentation from Ravi Alkalis that the
plant would operate in Pakistan and a
no-objection certificate from the'
Punjab EPA, the CEPA had little option
but to declassify the plant equipment as
hazardous waste on May 9, 1994. A scathing comment in Information, a
Danish newspaper, described the gaping
holes in Danish export legislation: "The
export of environmentally hazardous
waste and of technology relevant to
security is controlled by the authorities.
But environmentally damaging technology can freely be exported to developing
countries."
The official response in Pakistan too
made environmentalist groups see red.
Despite repeated attempts, the Punjab
EPA turned a deaf ear to their queries
about the proposed plant site, pollution
control measures to be adopted by Ravi
Alkalis, the EPA's capability to monitor
effluents or emissions from the factory
and punitive measures for breach of
national environmental quality standards. Similar apathy characterised
other government institutions such as
the Environmental Protection Council
and the Ministry of Environment and
Urban Affairs.
After an initially positive response to
the high decibel media campaign on the
dangers of the mercury cell technology,
the Pakistan Senate also soft pedalled the
import of the hazardous plant. On July
24, at the behest Of SDPI, the issue was
raised in the Senate. It was then referred
to the Senate Standing Committee on
Environment and Urban Affairs. The
Senate skimmed over the whole agonised debate over environmental risks,
by taking on faith Ravi Alkalis' argument that the plant would adhere to
national environmental quality standards and hazardous effluents would
not be allowed to escape into the environment. The plant was, therefore,
given a green signal by the Senate without any independent analysis.
From mid-October onwards, the
anti-plant lobby moved rapidly. Based
on a critique, of the Standing Committee's paper by the University of Exeter's
Earth Resources Centre, UK, the SDPI,
joined by other Pakistani NGOS such as
Shirkat Gah, Sungi Foundation,
Strengthening Participatory Organisations (sAP), World Conservation Union,
Pakistan and the Pakistan Institute of
Labour Education and Research (PILER)
accelerated their campaign. The NGOs-
with strong support from Greenpeace sent off letters voicing their apprehensions about the plant, to concerned officials both in Pakistan and
Denmark. Danish workers
who7had been employed at
the'bs plant and nearby
residents also wrote to the
Danish government about
the monumental problems
that they had faced for 20 years.
Early last November,
Greenpeace representative
Anne Leonard organised
meetings with the top
brass of the Senate
Standing Committee on
Environment and Urban
Affairs, and the Federal and Punjab
EPAS. She also visited the proposed site
of the plant at Sheikhupura and
unearthed some disconcerting facts: the
surrounding land was very fertile and
the 35,000 inhabitants living in the
vicinity of the Ravi Channels Link Road
were completely in the dark about the
implications of the plant.
In a dramatic gesture of solidarity,
local Danish activists began a 24-hour
candlelight vigil on November 9 in
Copenhagen as the mercury-contaminated equipment for the plant was
loaded into containers for shipment to
Pakistan. The shipment was to reach
Pakistan by the first week of December.
Danish dock workers and Pakistani
trade unions also voiced their condemnation of the transfer by refusing to be
associated with the loading and unloading of the shipment.
In the face of escalating protests, the
Senate Committee on Environment
agreed to re-examine its earlier decision
to allow the hazardous plant into
Pakistan. A hearing was fixed for
November 22, 1994. That date proved
momentous. At the hearing and later
at a press conference, the top brass
of. Ravi Alkalis announced their intention not to press ahead with the import
of the mercury cell and mercury
contaminated equipment and instead upgrade the technology to
membrane cell. Under Danish law,
such unused equipment reverts to being
classified as chemical waste and can not be exported under the Basel Convention.
As the initial euphoria over the
successful campaign wears off, Pakistani
NGOs are only too aware of the
challenges that lie ahead. The country's
close shave with the highly toxic DS plant
has put several concerns
high on their agenda:
pushing for a commitment from the North that
obsolete technology will
not be dumped in
Southern countries;
national legislation to ban
import of hazardous/
obsolete technology;
mechanisms to screen
incoming technology,
revision of the National
Environmental Quality
Standards; and a more rigorous and independent
Environmental Impact Assessment.
In the short term, a grou of 5 NGOS
has agreed to set up an Environment Monit 'oring Group (EMG). The
EMG has a clearmandate-to ensure that
Ravi Alkalis fulfills its commitment to
use a safer technology to produce chlorine and to monitor the chemicals industry.
The long term problems remain.
Says Bruno: "Membrane cell technology is definitely an improvement
over mercury cell technology from
the perspective of the local environment, because mercury emissions
and contamination are completely eliminated."
"However, the risk of chlorine gas
escapes-which can kill or severely
injure people-remain the same. In
addition, the chlorine itself, which is
so often incorporated into toxic
organochlorine chemicals, is still
the root of much of our toxic
contamination," adds Bruno.
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