By Alexis Hood
Yesterday the New York Times took on oil giant, Trafigura. The paper reports that Trafigura used Abidjan in the Ivory Coast as a dumping ground for highly toxic waste. In Global Sludge Ends in Tragedy for Ivory Coast, we learn that Trafigura tried to offload the waste in Amsterdam, but when the Port Services there asked for a fee of $300,000 because the sludge was so foul, Trafigura refused. To put this decision in context, Trafigura’s annual revenue last year was $28 billion dollars. Must have been hard to scrape a couple of grand together.
So Trafigura’s tanker sailed on with its poisonous cargo, finally reaching the Ivory Coast. There, Trafigura employed an Ivorian company, Tommy, to dispose of the waste for them. One night, Tommy sent out tanker trucks to dump industrial sludge around the city of Abidjan. Word of the illegal dumping spread, prompting violent demonstrations. Soon, people were flooding into hospitals to seek medical attention for weeping sores, headaches, nosebleeds, and stomach aches. Eight people died. This crisis has paralyzed the health system of an already fragile country, and precipitated mass government resignations.
Predictably, Trafigura has fluttered its eyelashes at the media and denied all responsibility for the dumping. Their press statement, which can be read on their website, is a brazen attempt at self-justification. They insist that the dumped waste contains ‘little or no toxicity,’ but others are questioning the accuracy of these claims. A lab in the Ivory Coast found that Trafigura’s sludge actually contained extremely high levels of hydrogen sulfide, a chemical compound which paralyses the nervous system.
Greenpeace has filed criminal complaints against Trafigura – but the oil giant is no stranger to lawsuits. In case you’re wondering where you’ve heard the name before, they were implicated in the UN /Iraq Oil-for-Food scandal.
All too often, the behaviour of Western companies in the Third World amounts to eco-terrorism. Coca Cola leaps to mind, with its abysmal track record of waste disposal and water contamination, not to mention alleged links to Colombian death squads. It prompts me to ask – why do international trade and business have to treat people as less than people, and exploit the poor and disenfranchised? Who sew our footballs, pick our bananas, and now, sleep in our shit.
Perhaps it’s time for the people of Abidjan to emulate the extraordinary Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan firebrand and Nobel Peace Prize winner, who became a powerful advocate for environmental human rights in Kenya.
