Emissions Trading Experts Call on INECE to Establish Working Groups on Registries, Verification Practices

INECE advanced its work on building environmental integrity in emissions trading systems through a workshop on "Improving Efficiency, Effectiveness & International Harmonization of Compliance Activities in Emissions Trading," held in Dublin, Ireland, on 8-9 March 2007.

The meeting resulted in recommendations for INECE to develop and facilitate technical working groups on four key topics: Registries, Verification, Compliance Assistance, and Monitoring & Reporting. The expert groups will seek to develop an independent assessment of current systems, including best practices, and provide recommendations to existing and emerging emissions trading schemes.

The workshop provided an opportunity for participants to discuss methods to strengthen compliance and harmonization in emissions trading schemes in order to ensure the integrity, accountability, and transparency of these efforts. Cooperation on compliance within and across emissions trading schemes has become increasingly critical as systems have begun to establish linkages.

Over 65 experts participated in the workshop, including representatives of the European emissions trading system, the U.S. Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, Japanese Volunteer Emissions Trading Scheme, international institutions, industry, academia, and non-governmental organizations. The workshop received high-level support from Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency and Ireland’s Ministry for the Environment, Heritage & Local Government.

Background papers and presentations are available on the INECE website, at http://inece.org/emissions/dublin/.

Argentine Environment Secretary Forces Petrochemical Relocation from Polluted River: Dow Chemical First to Go
By the Centro de Derechos Humanos y Ambienta (CEDHA), Argentina

The Argentine Environment Secretary, Romina Picolotti, has signed an agreement with ten large international petrochemical companies, in which they voluntarily agree to relocate from a city port location in Buenos Aires, to a less socially and environmental sensitive area.

The ten large multinationals, including giants like Dow Chemical, are situated on the Riachuelo, a tributary to the Rio de la Plata River on the fringes of Buenos Aires, not too far from its famous tango district in San Telmo, and on the shores of what may be one of the most contaminated urban rivers of Latin America.

The Riachuelo river, which runs along the city limits, has remained largely abandoned to thousands of uncontrolled polluting industries, including tanneries, chemical manufactures, etc. and is victim to failed urban planning, absent public policy, expanding informal settlements and general disregard by much of the +4 million people that live on or near its waters. The last known administration to have tended to it, was President Sarmiento, nearly 150 years ago.

From a human health perspective, the contamination of the Riachuelo basin is critical. One shantytown that sprung up on its shores is named “Villa Inflamable,” which literally means, “Inflammable City,” coined for the fact that at some locations in the shantytown, a lit match thrown on the ground lights the ground on fire.

The relocation of the petrochemical industry is one of the first and more visible actions of the many planned to recuperate the polluted river system. Building of proper sanitation systems to treat sewer waters (currently dumped into the river untreated), shantytown relocation, the elimination of clandestine waste sites, special health care treatment for local residents living near the river and modernization of outdated production technologies for the companies discharging waste water into the river, are high on the list of priorities. Works have already been commissioned, and some are already in implementation. The entire cleanup will take at 15 years and several billion dollars.

Picolotti gained national recognition for her legal advocacy to relocate a Finnish pulp mill which remains the center of an international conflict between Argentina and Uruguay. Shortly after she was awarded the 2006 Sophie Prize for her human rights and environmental advocacy inroads, Kirchner pulled her from the pulp mill dispute and named her Environment Secretary. The public and media have demanded for years that the government do something about the Riachuelo, and now this monumental task is at the top of the country’s environmental agenda. The relocation plan is central to the greater basin clean up plan. The Environment Secretariat only had a handful of staff working on compliance and control of environmental norms when Picolotti took office in July. Since, 120+ inspectors are already in training, for the Riachuelo alone. This pilot task force will serve as Argentina’s new compliance and enforcement agency. The other complication was overlapping jurisdictions of the river basin area, and the subsequent lack of political  resolve to unify positions to decide on solutions to the environmental nightmare. Picolotti convinced Kirchner to order a state of emergency for the entire Riachuelo basin, and through new legislation created the Riachuelo Basin Authority, with the Environment Secretary as its head, effectively eliminating any outstanding impediments or political misalignment necessary to address the river.

Dow Chemical, one of the ten companies who first resisted Picolotti’s order to vacate the premises they have operated on for decades, was the first to accept relocation as the best solution to the sensitive social and environmental problems faced in the river basin. Dow Chemical has announced that it has started dismantling operations and should be fully vacated by the end of March. While seven of the remaining petrochemical companies are following suit, two companies, including Orval, a local company, and Tagsa of Norway, have resisted relocation and are now facing legal action. The Environment Secretariat expects to have the necessary court orders ready well within the relocation time frame originally announced in September, which was then, one year. Dow’s early departure bodes well for this objective.  

For more information contact, please email jdtaillant@cedha.org.ar.

Countries Call Attention to the Climate Benefits of Repairing the Ozone Layer

An adjustment to the Montreal Protocol could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equal to the reductions mandated under the Kyoto Protocol. In light of this new scientific evidence, a unique coalition of developing and developed country Parties is pushing for an accelerated phase-out of HCFCs, used primarily as refrigerants for air conditioners. These chemicals both destroy the ozone layer and contribute substantially to global warming.

The efforts are being led by Argentina, who submitted a joint proposal with Brazil to “adjust” the ozone treaty to maximize climate benefits. Similar proposals were submitted by Mauritius, Mauritania, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau. Norway, Switzerland, and Iceland submitted a joint proposal, and the United States submitted one as well. All of the Parties submitting proposals are calling for the accelerated phase-out of HCFCs at the September 20 th Anniversary Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol, the international treaty that entered into force in 1989 to protect the ozone layer.

In addition to its success in protecting the ozone layer, the Montreal Protocol has been the most effective treaty so far in curbing greenhouse gases. Some of the substances regulated by the Protocol, such as CFCs, are greenhouse gases that are over ten-thousand times more potent than carbon dioxide. An important scientific study published last month calculates that by 2010, the Protocol’s phase-out of ozone-depleting substances will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an amount 11 times greater than the emissions targets of the Kyoto Protocol. This extraordinary accomplishment has already delayed the effects of climate change by up to 12 years.

With the proposed adjustments, the study calculates that further climate reductions are available under the Montreal Protocol, equal to 5-6 times Kyoto’s mandated reductions. The Protocol currently schedules HCFCs for phase-out later this century, but their increased use, particularly in developing countries, has heightened concerns over their potentially devastating impacts on both the ozone layer and the climate. The most widely used HCFC is HCFC-22, which is 1,700 times more powerful at warming the planet than carbon dioxide. Additionally, production of HCFC-22 results in by-product emissions of another greenhouse gas, HFC-23, which is 11,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

Romina Picolotti, Argentina’s Minister of Environment and a member of the INECE Executive Planning Committee, is a principal proponent of the accelerated phase-out. She noted that “if we accelerate the phase-out of HCFCs, we are going to make a great contribution to climate change, and to healing the ozone layer, which will reduce our vulnerability to dangerous ultraviolet radiation.”

In a policy article published last month, Donald Kaniaru, Rajendra Shende, Scott Stone, and Durwood Zaelke developed a strategy to maximize the climate benefits of the Montreal Protocol, and show that the Protocol has the potential to provide low-cost “insurance” against abrupt climate change, by further delaying climate forcing and effectively buying the world more time to get the post-Kyoto regime in place and the global carbon market running efficiently. The authors highlight the need to accelerate the phase-out of HCFCs, except where there are superior environmental benefits, when both ozone and climate impacts are considered; to address the banks of CFCs and other ozone depleting substances stored in old equipment and products, which will otherwise be emitted at products’ end-of-life and contribute climate emissions equal to 7.4 times Kyoto’s mandated reductions, in the same general time period; to require a destruction off-set for any continuing HCFC use; and to address compliance and enforcement issues, in light of illegal trade estimated to be 10 to 20% of total trade.

The success of the Montreal Protocol so far in healing the ozone layer and reducing greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to several factors: universal membership in the Protocol of 191 countries; a strong network of experience ozone officers in every Party; a strong history of successful technological innovation and transfer, based on a continuous process of treaty adjustment and amendment; and a dedicated funding mechanism in the Multilateral Fund, supplemented by the Global Environmental Facility for Parties with economies in transition. The Montreal Protocol can and should have a greater role in climate protection.

For more information, please see: Donald Kaniaru, Rajendra Shende, Scott Stone, & Durwood Zaelke, Strengthening the Montreal Protocol: Insurance Against Abrupt Climate Change (pdf), 7 Sustainable Development Law & Policy 3 (2007); Guus J.M. Velders, et. al., The importance of the Montreal Protocol in protecting climate, 104 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 4814 (2007); Environmental Investigation Agency, Turning Up the Heat: Linkages Between Ozone Layer Depletion and Climate Change: The Urgent Case of HCFCs and HFCs (pdf) (August 2006).

Updated Principles of Environmental Compliance and Enforcement Will Guide Improvement of Compliance Assurance Programs

INECE will publish an annotated version of its “Principles of Environmental Compliance and Enforcement” text. The original text was developed in 1992 to assist policymakers in international and domestic settings to develop the institutional capacity for designing and implementing effective programs for compliance with environmental requirements.

The updated version, developed in cooperation with the U.S. EPA and the Netherlands Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment, will focus on several essential elements to compliance and enforcement programs, including:

• Goal Setting and Strategic Planning
• Selecting a Management Approach
• Implementing the Selected Management Approach
• Promoting Compliance
• Monitoring
• Enforcement
• Evaluating the Success of the Program
• Building Infrastructure for Effective Compliance Assurance
• Performance Measurement

Please monitor the INECE website, http://www.inece.org, for the release of this publication.

Philippines Holds Public Officials Accountable for Involvement in Illegal Blast Fishing Operation
Submitted by Bonar Laureto, Executive Officer, Law of Nature Foundation

On 8 February 2007, a pre-dawn enforcement operation of the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and Visayan Sea Squadron (VSSq) led to the seizure of almost 2.5 tons of blasting powder used for dynamite fishing in the Visayas, Philippines.

In a raid in the Northern Cebu town of Medellin , enough blasting powder to make nearly 40,000 homemade sticks was seized. This is more than 10 times the explosive power of the blast that killed hundreds people in Bali, Indonesia. The simultaneous five-point operation was conducted on the strength of five search warrants issued by the Regional Trial Court of Cebu Judge Geraldine Econg. Conducted with near-surgical precision, some 50 special NBI and VSSq operatives in five teams simultaneously raided the premises of Rene Olivar, which yielded the cache of explosives. Olivar is reportedly a public official, an elected councilor of the Municipality of Medellin. His links with organized crime, particularly in the blast fishing business, have long been the subject of undercover surveillance and monitoring.

A better implementation of environmental laws in the Philippines is now something Filipinos can look forward to, as the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) takes “public accountability” to a whole new level. Following the seizure of blasting powder, IBP has resolved to launch a series of legal actions to hold accountable all public officials – from Barangay Captains to Police Personnel, all the way to Municipal Mayors and Councilors – should there be any violation to environmental laws within their area of jurisdiction and responsibility.

“It is the duty of the government officials concerned to implement and enforce environmental laws under the Local Government Code. Their failure, refusal or neglect to implement these laws for reasons of their own is tantamount to, at the every least, gross negligence in the performance of their public duty. This is penalized under the Graft and Corrupt Practices Law (Rep. Act 3019), under the Local Government Code and under the Code of Conduct for Public Officials,” said the IBP in a statement.

This operation is expected to paralyze the supply and distribution network of the blasting powder and paraphernalia in the notorious Northern Cebu part of the Visayan Sea . This so-called “Medellin Cartel” of blast fishing has long been notorious as the supplier of all blast fishing paraphernalia in Northern Cebu, Northern Negros Occidental, Northern Iloilo and Southern Masbate in the Philippines.

“This is the largest seizure of blasting powder ever in the Visayas and Mindanao regions,” noted NBI-Central Visayas Regional Director Ludgi de Lemos.

The NBI served as the lead agency, but was actively supported by the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP), Gov. Joseph Maranon of Negros Occidental, Congressman Leovigildo Banaag, Chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, the National Anti-Environment Crime Task Force (NAECTAF) and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the Dept. of Tourism-Scuba Diving Commission (PCSSD), and the Bureau of Fisheries (BFAR), among others. “The operation was the product of more than 1,000 days (3 years) of intelligence-gathering and painstaking field work,” said Visayan Sea Squadron Team Leader Tony Oposa. “It shows what can be achieved when people work hand-in-hand for a common cause.”

Numerous ordinary individuals and non-government organizations also extended their help such as the WWF-Philippines, Tanggol Kalikasan (TK), Environmental Legal Assistance Center (ELAC), the Philippine Bar Association (PBA), the University of the Philippines-Visayas, Silliman University, the International Network for Environmental Compliance and Enforcement (INECE), and ordinary citizens, including scuba-diving priests.

The alleged mastermind and crime syndicate boss Rene Olivar was able to escape the dragnet, leaving behind his caretaker Segundino Cuizon, now in NBI custody. Charges for illegal possession of explosives are being readied against Rene Olivar. It carries a maximum penalty of 20 years of imprisonment. In the meantime, a topnotch Legal Team of the Visayan Sea Squadron was mobilized led by top criminal lawyers Sigfrid Fortun, Hector Teodosio, Dante Ramos, Ben Cabrido, Manuel Monzon, Democrito Barcenas, and other volunteers from the IBP. Administrative charges are being readied against Rene Olivar before the Office of the Ombudsman for a string of cases ranging from gross misconduct, corrupt practices, and for violation of the Code of Conduct of Public Officers. Separate charges for anti-fencing (dealing in stolen products), anti-money laundering, and tax evasion are also being studied for investigation and prosecution.

For more information on the activities of the Law of Nature Foundation, please contact Bonar Laureto, Executive Officer, at bonlaureto@thelawofnature.org or visit http://www.thelawofnature.org.