Washington, DC — The UN estimates that 110,000 tons of obsolete toxic pesticides and associated wastes have accumulated in African countries in the last 4O years. These pesticides, sometimes in concentrated stockpiles, pose serious threats to both rural and urban populations, especially the poorest of the poor. They contribute to serious land and water degradation and undermine future development.
Their presence is part of a global problem involving the worldwide increase in the production and use of chemicals, - over 100,000 are currently in use - coupled with the reality that many of these are what have come to be known as POP's. This friendly sounding name actually describes some deadly killers, the persistent organic pollutants. Their effects are so toxic, on humans and wildlife, that after years of pressure from concerned scientists and environmentalists, governments took the first steps to eliminating these toxic substances in May 2001, by bringing into being the Stockholm Convention a global and legally binding convention for the elimination of POP's.
One important feature of the treaty relates to stockpiles. Clifton Curtis of the World Wildlife Fund, was a key player in helping achieve the Stockholm convention on POPs. He is now WWF-US's resident expert on toxic waste. He is closely involved in the Africa Stockpiles Program (ASP). This is a strategic partnership of stakeholders, which currently includes several UN agencies,intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations such as the WWF, Pesticide Action Network UK(PAN-UK) and PAN-Africa, along with the World Bank, CropLife, the organization representing major pesticide producers, and The Global Environment Facility, in a project designed to identify, remove and safely destroy Africa's toxic chemical stockpiles. AllAfrica's Akwe Amosu spoke with Curtis recently about this work.
Why does this issue matter so much?
It's an important issue because the rotting bags of pesticides and stockpiles that have been put in valleys or hill areas, away from human traffic, leach into the ground water or can be blown on the wind and carried distances. These pesticides can be extremely toxic to humans as well as wildlife in surrounding areas. The toxicity can have direct effects on people in terms of their immediate daily lives. They are also known to have generational impacts in terms of reproduction, the development of immune systems, and so on. Thus getting rid of such stockpiles, in order to avoid their adverse impact on the environment and human health, in an environmentally responsible way, is an important objective.
Do you have evidence that these chemicals are affecting people?
We have studies, especially in developed countries where scientific research money is more readily available, which show clearly the significant adverse impacts, on animals and humans, of these pesticides. Evidence is more anecdotal in Africa, in terms of the extent of research that's been done. But there is no reason to believe that the studies done in more affluent countries do not apply in similar situations across the African continent. In some countries where inventories have been compiled - Ethiopia and Mali are two of the countries with the largest quantities of obsolete stockpiles - they have indications of contamination of ground water supplies, of drinking water wells, that are of concern to health officials.
How did the situation get so bad? Was no-one paying attention? Like the governments? Or the owners of this material?
Some of these stockpiles go back 30-40 years. The problem was created by a mixture of inadequately informed decisions about how much pesticide was needed in the receiving country, and concerns about plans for health or environmental threats. For instance, there is a locust problem which cuts across a swathe of Africa. Officials were advised that the pesticides would help but the locusts didn't come in the numbers anticipated.
From the exporting side, the governments, on numerous occasions, exported pesticides that were no longer commercially 'state of the art' in the US, Europe or Japan; or the private sector companies wanted to offload chemicals that were surplus supplies and the recipient countries had little choice about these "gifts" or were heavily subsidized to take whatever was given to them.
There are far too few resources to deal with the problems on the ground in individual countries. Almost always, according to discussions we've had with government officials, they were faced with a choice between spending their grants from the African Development Bank, or World Bank, or bilateral agency on poverty alleviation, water quality control or some other urgent issue, or for stockpile clean up. More often than not, they would say; "Well, you know, that stockpile has been there 20 or 30 years already, let's deal with this other more pressing issue." So stockpile removal lost out.
The creation of a dedicated fund was one of the beauties of this program, and one of the driving forces that excited everybody involved when the idea was put in place toward the end of the global Stockholm convention on POPs. Now countries will not need to make some 'Solomonic' choice between abandoning addressing one serious problem in order to solve another.
If we were in the United States, and this problem was apparent, someone would be asking; "Who owns this stuff? Aren't they legally responsible for it?" Is there a sense that with projects like this, African governments and companies are not being held to account, get let off the hook?
That's a valid concern. I'm not as well-positioned to answer that as some policy makers, more conversant with the functioning of these governments. In some instances it may happen because the ministry of agriculture isn't talking to the minister of environment; or because there is somebody in one part of the government who benefits financially from these pesticides coming, and is willing to turn a blind eye to the environmental issues of proper storage and handling. These things happen in the developed world also - and are always issues where governments need to be held accountable.
There is also the company's liability, to which you alluded. That has been a frustrating part of the equation in this Africa Stockpiles Program. We believe that industry should be able to cover a substantial portion of the $250m dollars estimated cost of clean-up and prevention. To date we've gotten from industry a commitment of only $2m based on their ability to follow through on the clean-up during the first phase of 2003-6. This commitment will extend only to those pesticides that can be clearly fingerprinted as coming from companies that are part of CropLife International - the principal international pesticide association. They are willing to pay for the clean-up associated with those products but none others. This has posed a real difficulty for the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), for example, pushing them into detailed discussions of whether bag x came from company y and resulting in years of disagreements over who owned the product and whether or not CropLife International should cover the cost.
How close is the project to having the funds it needs to do this job.
We are at the front end of the fund-raising; we're optimistic, given discussions we have had with OECD donor governments, including European countries, the US, Canada and Japan. But the bilateral aid agencies have wanted to see more detail and we're just at the stage of knowing which countries are in the anticipated first phase of clean-up efforts.
We are going to the Global Environment Facility's council for its endorsement at the meeting in Beijing in mid-October and that, for many people, will the political benchmark for whether this project is a go, signaling that we have our act together, that we have the detailed planning in place and have thought through the risks and benefits.
If we have that endorsement, we see the likelihood of a donor round-table later this year or early next year.There will still be several more months of country work-plan preparation and project reviews, prior to the overall programmes going operational in May - July next year.
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And which countries will be first?
Among them are Ethiopia, Mali, Botswana, South Africa, Tunisia and Nigeria.
What is to stop the unregulated accumulation of pesticides happening all over again after you've cleared the present stockpiles?
That's an important question. The project has estimated the actual cost of cleaning up the chemical as $175-$200m. The other $50-$75m is slated for prevention - to help stop the reappearance of stockpiles in the future.
The first stage is to deal with the worst of the problem - getting the bags and barrels shipped out, transported to high technology, high-burn facilities in Europe. Once we've dealt with that stage, we hope local players can address the handling of stockpiles thereafter.
One of the guidelines of GEF/World Bank participation is that we need a country-driven initiative with the mandate to provide capacity building to enable governments to develop the expertise necessary to deal with the second, third, and fourth stages of clear-up activities.
But you're confident that this project will succeed?
One of the themes at the WSSD was looking at partnerships as a way for diverse stakeholders to help move towards sustainable development. The Africa Stockpiles Program is an excellent example of that - it has all the key actors involved - multilateral bodies like the UN, the private sector, NGOs and African countries.
This mix of participants can provide a model in terms of other activities in Africa. Also we're now hearing from Central and Eastern Europe and Asia, among others, asking "Why only Africa? Why not do this with us?" and this is exciting; we can replicate this successful model in other parts of the world.
We chose Africa first because the FAO felt it had the best inventory of stockpiled chemicals there - there may be worse problems in other parts of the world, but in Africa we have 50,000 or more tons identified so we felt we were in a better position to move expeditiously.
