"The Perfect should not be the Enemy of the Good." My first face-to-face with Donald Summers (the guy who told reporters I lie through my teeth), ended on that note, and Donald said it first. We must prioritize our environmental issues, not based on the money and attention they bring our environmental organizations, but on the risk and harm.
When I met the head of Interpol's "Project Eden" in Lyon, France, last Monday, he had just returned from a trip to Sri Lanka, where 300 elephant tusks were seized. Cees described his feelings, seeing the tusks there, and imagining the scale of the slaughter.
And toxic waste dumping in Africa is real, too. Here is a 2006 story about a Dutch shipping company which dumped tons of highly toxic waste (from the cleaning of sea ship gasoline tanks) - the Transfigura Ivory Coast case was settled for $45M, thanks to a Dutch Court. Amnesty Inernational and Greenpeace did important work. The money is actually being distributed in Africa, not used to fund NGO offices in Seattle. WR3A's attorney/stagaire, Fred Somda of Burkina Faso, was the first to make the point that planned obsolescence campaigns by OEMs should not distract from serious need for enforcement of the Basel Convention.
From Wikipedia 2013.07.28:
"The 2006 Côte d'Ivoire toxic waste dump was a health crisis in Côte d'Ivoire in which a ship registered in Panama, the Probo Koala, chartered by the Dutch-based oil and commodity shipping company Trafigura Beheer BV, offloaded toxic waste at the Ivorian port of Abidjan. The waste was then dumped by a local contractor at as many as 12 sites in and around the city of Abidjan in August 2006.
Fifteen people died, and thousands were treated. We don't want to forget how important it is to truly enforce the Basel Convention, when someone is avoiding the true cost of disposing toxics by dumping it in sacks on African shores. We do not want to label environmental watchdogs and enforcement agencies as "bullyboys".
At the Vermont Fair Trade Recycling Summit, Frederic Fahiri Somda made a clear case for the risk and danger of dumping toxic waste in Africa. But he also said it's absurd to compare TV repair to Tranfsigura.
When I met the head of Interpol's "Project Eden" in Lyon, France, last Monday, he had just returned from a trip to Sri Lanka, where 300 elephant tusks were seized. Cees described his feelings, seeing the tusks there, and imagining the scale of the slaughter.And toxic waste dumping in Africa is real, too. Here is a 2006 story about a Dutch shipping company which dumped tons of highly toxic waste (from the cleaning of sea ship gasoline tanks) - the Transfigura Ivory Coast case was settled for $45M, thanks to a Dutch Court. Amnesty Inernational and Greenpeace did important work. The money is actually being distributed in Africa, not used to fund NGO offices in Seattle. WR3A's attorney/stagaire, Fred Somda of Burkina Faso, was the first to make the point that planned obsolescence campaigns by OEMs should not distract from serious need for enforcement of the Basel Convention.
From Wikipedia 2013.07.28:
"The 2006 Côte d'Ivoire toxic waste dump was a health crisis in Côte d'Ivoire in which a ship registered in Panama, the Probo Koala, chartered by the Dutch-based oil and commodity shipping company Trafigura Beheer BV, offloaded toxic waste at the Ivorian port of Abidjan. The waste was then dumped by a local contractor at as many as 12 sites in and around the city of Abidjan in August 2006.
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| Ivory Coast kid poisoned by Trafigura - photo Al Jazeera |
The gas caused by the release of these chemicals is blamed by the UN and the government of Côte d'Ivoire for the deaths of 17 and the injury of over 30,000 Ivorians, with injuries that ranged from mild headaches to severe burns of skin and lungs. Almost 100,000 Ivorians sought medical attention for the effects of these chemicals.[1]
The substance was claimed by Trafigura to have been "slops", or waste water from the washing of the Probo Koala's tanks. An inquiry in the Netherlands, in late 2006, revealed the substance was more than 500 tonnes of a mixture of fuel, caustic soda, and hydrogen sulfide for which Trafigura chose not to pay a €1,000 per cubic metre disposal charge at the port of Amsterdam. The Probo Koala was turned away by several countries before offloading the toxic waste at the Port of Abidjan.[2][3]
Fifteen people died, and thousands were treated. We don't want to forget how important it is to truly enforce the Basel Convention, when someone is avoiding the true cost of disposing toxics by dumping it in sacks on African shores. We do not want to label environmental watchdogs and enforcement agencies as "bullyboys".
At the Vermont Fair Trade Recycling Summit, Frederic Fahiri Somda made a clear case for the risk and danger of dumping toxic waste in Africa. But he also said it's absurd to compare TV repair to Tranfsigura.
