'The Pirates Of Rubbish'
By Loretta Napoleoni
17 May,
2008
Countercurrents.org
The new Italian government will have to solve the garbage crisis in the south of Italy. Berlusconi has even promised to run the country from Naples three times per week until all the rubbish accumulated for months has been cleared. Indeed the crisis is serious, its frightening echo resonates abroad and many claim that this is yet another billion dollar racket of organized crime, which traditionally handles garbage in Italy. But how many global market consumers know that organised crime handles our toxic waste, from old cell phones to discharged batteries, and that it ends up in the garbage dumps of the world, particularly in poor developing countries, contaminating the environment? How many know that this illegal activity is a multi-billion dollar business that involves the entire industrialised world, including our governments? Those who manage this unpleasant industry are part of a new generation of globalization outlaws: the pirates of rubbish.
Wealthy countries have said no to ‘uncomfortable’ refuse that pollutes the environment and globalization has permitted them to easily dispose of it. Cost and environment are at the root of this decision. Following the directives of the European Union, decontaminating and disposing of toxic waste costs in the West over $1000 per ton. The pirates of rubbish offer prices ten times lower including the cost of transport beyond national borders to ‘dispose’ of the waste. This explains why 47 percent of European garbage, including toxic materials such as electronic waste from old computers to medical equipment, is almost completely shipped by sea to developing countries, frequently on board pirate ships.
In order to avoid controls, pirates use ‘flags of convenience’, which frequently change en route. Although international law stipulates that the country of registry is ultimately responsible for controlling the ships’ activities, some states permit vessels to fly their flag for hundreds or a few thousand dollars without any supervisions. Amongst them is Sierra Leone, a country ruled by warlords and Uzbekistan, a landlocked country.
The toxic waste business is global. According to the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the annual global production of electronic waste ranges from 20 and 50 million tons, comprising recyclable and non-recyclable material. The former generally ends up in India or China where it is auctioned to aspiring Asian industrialists; the latter ends up in the hands of pirates.
Modern
piracy presents all the characteristics of classic piracy, i.e. it
bears little resemblance to the contemporary romanticized image of
pirates. Forget the blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean. Picture
instead, the model of organized global criminality operating on a
world scale and apply it to the oceans, which cover 80 percent of
the world’s
surface and upon which anarchy reigns. In the last decade, marine
piracy has increased 168 percent and the attacks are more and more
violent, warned the transport commission of the English Parliament
in July of 2006. Coincidentally, this report was released shortly
after two attacks on British ships carrying aid to the tsunami victims
in Indonesia. But it is the toxic waste industry that since the early
90s has been growing at a rate never seen before.
The modern day Tortuga Islands are in the Baltic and in the South China Sea. In the North the Russian mafia, which assumed control of the former Soviet fleet after the fall of the Soviet Union, runs the piracy racket. Since the early 1990s, organized crime has been roaming the Northern seas from the port of Murmansk, the pride of the Soviet fleet. Murmansk was on the Northern Sea Route, a commercial highway of about 5000 kilometres stretching from the Baltic to the nickel mines of Norilsk. At its height in 1987, more than 7 million tons of goods transited these freezing waters. Today Murmansk plays host to the outlaws of the Baltic and northern seas which handles ‘toxic’ garbage.
Twenty-first
century pirates of rubbish sail all the seas. Besides the Russians,
the majority of pirates operate in the Malacca Straits, an 800 kilometre
long corridor separating Indonesia from Malaysia. This is where 42
percent of the world’s acts of piracy take place, as well as
the Arabian Sea, the South China Sea and off the coast of West Africa.
Today’s pirates have sophisticated technology at their disposal.
“A pirate ship captured (in 1999) in Indonesia was equipped
with false immigration stamps, instruments with which to falsify ship’s
documents, sophisticated radar systems and equipment for communication
and satellite positioning,” reads a report from the International
Maritime
Organization (IMO). Overwhelmingly, modern pirates are entrepreneurs
dedicated to the international commerce of stolen merchandise, with
an estimated profit of $16 billion dollars a year, and to the shipment
of toxic waste.
Among their best clients is Japan, the Asian leader in the export of toxic materials. The most frequent destinations are Thailand, India, China and Hong Kong. In 2006, Chinese garbage pirates dumped more than 195 million kilos of toxic powder along the Thai coast and illegally exported to China 400 tons of toxic material which had originated in hospitals, electronic and chemical plants in Japan.
Overall, however, the most popular destination for the unwanted and undesirable refuse of rich countries is Africa. The non-governmental organization (NGO) Basel Action Network reveals that 75 percent of the electronic material that arrives in Nigeria cannot be recycled and becomes polluting agents. Somalia regularly receives tons and tons of radioactive and electronic waste. Frequently, taking advantage of the absence of a strong central government, the rubbish pirates dump their lethal cargoes at sea: some actually reappeared after the December 2005 tsunami and provoked hypocritical waves of public outrage.
Among the toxic material unveiled by the tsunami there was radioactive uranium, cadmium, mercury, lead and also highly toxic chemical, industrial and hospital materials from Europe. The shipment dated back to 1992 when a group of European companies recruited Swiss company Archair Partners and the Italian company Progresso, both specialised in the export of undesirable waste. Between 1997 and 1998, the Italian weekly Famiglia Cristiana and the Italian branch of Greenpeace denounced such business in a series of articles. Greenpeace even managed to get hold of a copy of the agreement signed by President of Somalia Ali Mahdi Mohamed, wherein he agreed to receive 10 million tons of toxic waste in exchange for $80 million. This equates to a cost of $8 per ton against a recycling and dismantling cost in Europe of 1000 dollars per ton.
Africa is the world’s garbage disposal because it is the poorest continent, and poor people are hungry. In the 90s, radioactive meat from the ex-Soviet Union was buried in Zambia after the local population had consumed some of it. Some members of the local population dug up the meat and ate it. In 2000, Zambia received, as ‘donations’ cans of contaminated meat from the Czech Republic. After this discovery the 2880 cans were buried in the village of Chongwe, east of the capital Lusaka, at a depth of 3.5 meters underground and covered with a layer of cement. Subsequently, out of hunger, the local residents did everything possible to get to the meat. Two years later a Belgian newspaper Gazet van Antwerpen reported that they had eventually succeeded in digging it up and had eaten it all.
The garbage crisis in Naples is but the tip of the iceberg of a global rogue phenomenon of which we, wealthy consumers in the global village, are unwitting business partners. We should stop ignoring this reality.
Loretta Napoleoni is the best selling author of Terror Incorporated and Insurgent Iraq. Her latest book is called Rogue Economics. An expert on financing of terrorism, she advises several governments on counter-terrorism. She is senior partner of G Risk, a London based risk agency. As Chairman of the countering terrorism financing group for the Club de Madrid, Napoleoni brought heads of state from around the world together to create a new strategy for combating the financing of terror networks. She is a Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC. and a Rotary Scholar at the London School of Economics.
To review
further articles and listen to podcasts by Loretta Napoleoni, you
are invited to visit her website: *http://www.lorettanapoleoni.org*
