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BANGALORE, Mar 17, 2011 (IPS) - Several incinerator facilities that were supposed to turn waste into energy have proven to be white elephants that are now adding to the country’s pollution woes, instead of alleviating them.

"Massive waste-to-energy plant subsidies are ruining the waste management field in India," said Almitra Patel, a civil engineer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. "Companies are now using these subsidies to set up plants that fail."

Solid waste experts are alarmed these facilities - which failed to work in the 1980s and 1990s - continue to exist.

Waste-to-energy (WTE) plants, are releasing toxic fumes because wastes are not being burned properly. Waste incineration technology - controversial in western countries - is even more toxic in India due to mixed, un-segregated wastes, which emit a medley of poisonous gases such as dioxins and furans when burned.

At Timarpur in New Delhi, a WTE incineration plant imported from the Danish firm Volund Milijotecknick in 2003 - which subsequently failed - has been resurrected, and another WTE incinerator is being built in Okhla.

Activists are protesting violations of environmental procedures at the Timarpur plant, which is surrounded by a community of about 500,000.

In February 2011, the Asian Development Bank withdrew funding to the plant under its Asia Pacific Carbon Fund, but the Timarpur Okhla Waste Management Company claims it will be able to reduce carbon emissions by 262,791 tonnes per year for the next ten years, and has filed for carbon credits.

WTE "works only on paper", said Mumbai-based Ragini Jain, who works on dry waste policy, explaining how Indian waste will not combust sufficiently to produce adequate electricity. Indian waste is mainly biodegradable compostable waste with high moisture content. When it arrives at the WTEs it is also mixed with non-biodegradable plastics, aluminium and similar substances - the wastes are not separated.

India set up solid waste management rules in 2000, making urban towns responsible for waste segregation and disposal, and recommending composting as the most suitable form of waste disposal after segregation.

The Solid Waste Rules of 2000 were set up after Patel petitioned the supreme court in 1996, claiming that the government was neglecting the responsibility of proper waste management. The court later appointed Patel head of a national committee on solid waste.

In 2005, Patel again filed a public interest lawsuit before the supreme court, petitioning the court to put a stay on government subsidies for all proposed and future WTE projects until the current plants had been adequately reviewed for feasibility.

The court ordered a stay on government subsidies for further WTEs, allowing only five of these projects to proceed for research and development purposes.

The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy however says there is no court ban on promoting further WTE projects.

India now has a reported 33 WTE projects in the works, of which several have the makings of financial corruption and administrative malfeasance, say NGO activists and waste management experts in Bangalore, New Delhi and Mumbai.

Shanta Ram Maley, who specialises in solid waste management, pointed to the lack of understanding in India of technologies for dealing with municipal wastes, citing current failures in WTE technology in places like Hyderabad and Vijayawada in southern India, and Chandigarh and Jaipur in northern India.

Chandigarh, touted as having India’s most well administered municipality, is now "throwing good compost into a landfill [thereby wasting both compostable material and landfill space]", says Maley.

Following a ban on plastics and a new recycling system for non-biodegradable wastes, the local WTE plant in Chandigarh is now deprived of non-biodegradables needed for refuse-derived pelletisation, and left with incombustible biodegradable waste.

"There is no accountability for operations from these companies, and no responsibility for their monitoring taken by the Ministry," Maley says.

There is some ambiguity over where responsibility lies. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy passes the buck on approval of technologies to another department, the Central Pollution Control Board.

Under the National Action Plan on Climate Change, WTE technology is one of the ways the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy has chosen to promote renewable energy.

Small-scale municipal WTE plants are working well. In Pune, Additional Municipal Commissioner Suresh Jagtap said a successful system of segregation has been set up for their twelve micro WTE units.

"Most of these work well only in small-scale systems where wastes can be segregated according to its nature," says Maley. What Indian municipal wastes need, Maley suggested, is an integrated system of management that incorporates both composting and small-scale combustion technologies. 

NEW DELHI, Apr 21, 2011 (IPS) - Will India, the world’s biggest manufacturer of the pesticide endosulfan, and also the biggest victim of the toxic pesticide, persist with opposing its ban globally?

A coalition of health and environmental activists fears that the central government is preparing to oppose a ban at the Apr. 25 -29 fifth conference of the parties (CoP) to the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants, or ‘POPs Treaty’, in Geneva.

"We understand that the central government will continue to support endosulfan use, although India risks being isolated in Geneva," said Ravi Agarwal, director of Toxics Link, a participating member of the International POPs Elimination Network.

At the last review committee of the POPs Treaty in October 2010, that had recommended a ban on endosulfan, India forced a vote and then became the only country that voted against it.

But the 172 countries that have ratified the POPs Treaty, in force since May 17, 2004, can push for a ban at the CoP in Geneva, though countries like China, which abstained, and others may oppose it at the forum.

India signed the POPs treaty under the United Nations on May 14, 2002, and ratified it on Jan. 13, 2006. The POPs treaty has helped classify chemicals which are toxic for the environment and to human health.

To attract a ban under the POPs Treaty a chemical has to be persistent, bio-accumulative and a risk to human health - all of which have been scientifically proved in the case of endosulfan.

Independent studies in several countries, including one carried out by India’s National Institute of Occupational Health (NIOH), have linked the chemical to seizures and deaths. Long-term effects of low-dose exposure have been linked to autism, delayed puberty and birth defects.

Agarwal told IPS that the central government’s attitude was "unfortunate", considering that two Indian states, southern Kerala and Karnataka, have already banned endosulfan.

Separately, he said, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), a statutory body, had on Dec. 31, 2010 recommended a ban on endosulfan saying that the stand of the central government had led to grave violations of human rights.

"Since endosulfan is a POP, the dangers it poses will linger and multiply through the generations, causing harm on a scale that cannot presently be quantified," the NHRC said.

The NHRC had earlier been informed by the central government that it did not believe that endosulfan was harmful, and had, therefore, opposed its listing under Annexe A chemicals of the POPs Treaty that are fit to be eliminated.

NHRC said it could not understand the logic of the Indian government when "the countries that have banned endosulfan are those that have access to the most advanced scientific research and include the United States, the European Union, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia and New Zealand, that have taken their decision on the basis of scientific data and studies."

NHRC categorically asked the central government to "join the international consensus at the next meeting in April 2011 of the state parties of the Stockholm Convention and permit the listing of endosulfan as an Annexe A chemical."

Already 81 countries have either banned or decided to phase out endosulfan, though 27 countries continue to use it. Many of them like the Philippines face local demands for its ban.

Brazil, China, and India are major agricultural countries where the use of endosulfan continues to be legal. Brazil, however, has announced that it will be phasing out the chemical.

Endosulfan is also currently under consideration as an addition to another international treaty, the Rotterdam Convention, which requires government-to-government notification when dangerous pesticides and other chemicals cross international borders.

India produces about 10,500 tonnes of endosulfan annually and exports about 50 percent of it, with the manufacturers successfully lobbying the government to oppose moves for a global ban.

The pesticide, sprayed on crops by aircraft or manually, is popular for its cheapness with farmers who grow cotton, cashew, potatoes, coffee and soybeans.

Endosulfan not only kills such insect pests as whiteflys, aphids, leafhoppers, potato beetles and cabbage worms, but also agricultural workers. The Kerala government acknowledges that several hundred of its workers may have died of endosulfan toxicity.

Various abnormalities have also been found among the population near the estates of the state-owned Plantation Corporation of Kerala, where aerial spraying of endosulfan was conducted for more than two decades.

Health surveys have identified at least 4,000 victims in the Kasaragod district of Kerala, with more than 2,500 of them chronically ill or maimed.

Against such evidence the Pesticide Manufacturers and Formulators Association of India (PMFAI) has been conducting a counter-campaign, planting ‘scientific’ reports in newspapers to question the findings of the NIOH.

India exports about 40 million dollars worth of endosulfan annually, or about 70 percent of the world trade in the chemical.

Agarwal says the money involved is trivial compared to the price paid in terms of public health. He says many alternatives are available.

"It is for the government to put public health before profits for the pesticides industry," said Dr. Mira Shiva, a respected physician, who represents the Initiative for Health and Equity in Society and the All- India Drug Action Network.

Shiva said the evidence from Kerala and Karnataka on the dangers to human health caused by endosulphan was overwhelming and that the government should have honoured the NIOH study rather than "succumb to pressure from corporate interests."

Gopal Krishna, convenor of the Toxics Watch Alliance, a major campaigner, said the non-seriousness of the government towards the POPs Treaty can be seen from the fact that it missed the Dec. 4, 2008 deadline for transmission of its National Implementation Plan (NIP) to the POPs secretariat.

The draft of the NIP was available for public comment until l April 1, 2011.

BANGALORE, Apr 14, 2011 (IPS) - Military debris dumped into the world’s oceans are hazardous to coral ecosystems, reefs, fish and marine wildlife, say experts, who also warn - in light of the recent tragedy in Japan - that earthquakes and tsunamis could disturb this debris and even wash it ashore.

"The tsunami from the Japan earthquake increased the likelihood of sea dumped conventional and chemical weapons washing ashore as they rest at a shallow depth of 200 metres in Choshi Bay of Chiba Prefecture in Japan," said Ryo Sato, marine researcher at Global Green, the U.S. affiliate of the NGO Green Cross International.

The Baltic Sea, North Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, and Pacific Ocean are hotspots.

In the Philippines "Coron, Subic Bay and Leyte Gulf have the highest density of planes and ships sunk during the Second World War, and numerous shipwrecks and airplanes litter the seafloor in the reefs," according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Philippines. 

"The U.S. Army dumped over 8,000 tonnes of chemical weapons off Hawaii," said Paul Walker, director of Global Green, at the recently concluded Fifth U.N. International Marine Debris Clearance conference in Hawaii. Around 300,000 tonnes of chemical warfare agents were dumped in oceans from 1946 to 1965. Upwards of 400,000 gas filled-bombs and rockets float in U.S. waters. 40,000 tonnes of Conventional Weapons (CW) are in the Baltic Sea. 21,000 tonnes of CW agents float in Australian waters, and more than 6,600 tonnes off the coast of Japan.

"Marine debris... adversely impacts marine life, destroys habitat and entangles food for marine organisms and seabirds," says Finn Longinotto, senior programme fellow at Global Green.

France conducted 137 undersea nuclear tests between 1975 and 1996 in French Polynesia creating an artificial crater 140 metres in diameter - disturbing one million cubic metres of coral and sand. The explosions injected nuclear material into the carbonate rocks that will be released gradually into the ocean. Earthquakes and undersea landslides will intensify release of the radioactive material, affecting seafood, ocean currents, and rain bearing clouds around the whole planet in the long term.

Residual nuclear material is negligible according to a study initiated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the behest of the France in 1998.

According to a study undertaken by the University of Florida, missiles, torpedoes, and submarines emit sonar waves leaving cetaceans like dolphins, dugongs and whales hearing impaired - affecting their hunting ability, group communication, migration patterns, and mating behaviour.

India’s armed forces have also destroyed fragile marine habitat and coral ecosystems. In the Bay of Bengal, India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) conducts missile tests in the middle of a turtle-nesting site within the Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary.

"DRDO is not supposed to carry out missile testing during the turtle nesting season. However, they flout this rule despite regular forest department objections," charges Biswajit Mohanty, of the Wildlife Society of Orissa.

"In one recent incident, the missile misfired, resulting in the destruction of the turtle nesting habitat in Nasi Island inside the Gahirmatha Marine Sanctuary - a breeding ground for olive ridley turtles. The vibration coming from missile launches being almost equal to seismic intensity can have an impact on the fragile eggs, we still don’t know scientifically what happens as an impact on the eggs," Mohanty told IPS. "The DRDO is insensitive that the state’s unique natural heritage - olive ridley turtles - might abandon the nesting grounds if the missile activity disturbs them."

The DRDO "have not disclosed the nature of debris littered in the sea," Mohanty added.

The government response: "DRDO takes due care to avoid any adverse effect on eco-system while planning and conducting missile tests from DRDO ranges. The launching pad has been designed in such a manner that it does not affect the fauna and flora of that area or cause any adverse effect on the environment."

"The flares emanating from missile launch heat the habitat, and disorient the turtles and hatchlings especially when they head to the sea," says a concerned Mohanty.

The DRDO however told IPS that, "All illuminated lights are placed in inverted position with shades and flames coming out of missiles lasting less than a minute, which do not affect the nesting of olive ridley turtles."

The Indian Navy has also chosen the coral island of Netrani on India’s west coast for "target practice," V. N. Nayak, marine biologist at the post graduate centre of Karnatak University in Karwar told IPS. "Netrani Island is home to diverse fauna, enlisted both in the IUCN [International Union for Conservation of Nature] Red Data List and the Indian Wildlife Protection Act’s Schedule One."

Naval exercises are a dire threat to the ecosystem, Nayak said. The large number of bullets, bombs, missiles and torpedoes fired at the endemic wildlife of the island and the seas cause mass mortality of fish and corals in this ecosystem. "Target practice on endangered wildlife is irresponsible," he stressed. "Netrani Island is located under the Coastal Regulatory Zone 4 and fishing zone."

Netrani Island’s fauna includes the white bellied sea eagle, corals, coral fish, whale shark, tiger shark, giant groupers, giant clam, dolphins, sea snakes, crustaceans, reef sharks, stingrays, squid, sea cucumbers olive ridley turtles, jelly fish, sea urchins, killer whales and edible nest swiftlets. The island is the only place outside of the Andaman Nicobar Islands where edible nest swiftlets live.

"Naval firing practices are periodically conducted on a 16-metre barren rock, located close to Netrani Island," the Indian Navy told IPS. "Such firing practices have been conducted for the last six decades." With chances of an outbreak of hostilities stemming from the terrorist attacks in Mumbai "the necessity for the Indian Armed Forces to remain combat-ready... at all times can hardly be over-emphasised. It is precisely this realisation that has already led the Karnataka Biodiversity Board to drop the proposal to consider Netrani Island a Biodiversity Park."

"Who is the enemy for the Indian Navy to bombard unarmed wildlife?" asks K. S. N. Cikkerur, the additional director general of the police forest cell of Karnataka, in Bangalore. Is the enemy the rare "Schedule One species listed in the Wildlife Protection Act?" Cikkerur wonders.

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