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Burning off plastic to retrieve copper from old cables, near Nairobi's Mathare slum. Image credit: Flickr/Meena Kadri
Pollution can take many forms. Sometimes it’s in the form of a plastic bottle, the wind making it rattle down a dusty road. Sometimes it’s more conceptual, like someone planting the idea this is the way it has to be - that it’s somehow what a country deserves.
Sometimes, it’s both.
That seems to be the case when it comes to East Africa’s plastic problem. One the one hand, the region is a pioneer. Rwanda led through a ban on single use plastic bags in 2008, followed by Kenya in 2017 and Tanzania in 2019. And this year Kenya marked World Environment Day by introducing a ban on single use plastic in all beaches, forests and conservation areas.
But that could all change if some of the world’s richer, more politically powerful, players have their way.
Because, as far as some of them are concerned, plastic pollution is in fact a big part of Kenya’s future.
Chemical reaction
An investigation by Greenpeace’s investigative journalism unit Unearthed earlier this year showed that the Big Oil-backed lobby group, the American Chemistry Council (ACC), was pushing Donald Trump’s administration to try and expand the plastics industry as part of the ongoing US-Kenya free trade deal talks.
In public letters to the US Trade Representative and US International Trade Commission, the ACC writes: “Kenya could serve in the future as a hub for supplying US-made chemicals and plastics to other markets in Africa through this trade agreement.”
The letters also called for the lifting of limits on the waste trade -- rules designed to limit plastic pollution that the letters show companies represented by the ACC had opposed.
The ACC claimed at the time that it was lobbying to remove some of the regulations because they “could very well limit the ability of African and other developing countries to properly manage plastic waste.”
But African experts were not convinced -- saying the removal of such restrictions could mean “Kenya will become a dump site for plastic waste”.
Campaigners are now calling on Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Trade, Industrialisation and Enterprise Development, Betty Maina, “to commit to Africa's Plastic-free vision” as the country negotiates with the US.
An online petition, organised by Greenpeace, calls on officials to reject terms in any new agreement that would make it easier for the US to export its plastic to Kenya. The “Do Not Backslide on Plastics” campaign already has over 21,000 signatures.
Fredrick Njehu, Senior Political Advisor for Greenpeace Africa, told my colleague Maina Waruru that most of those who signed the petition are Kenyans, many of them young and alarmed at the prospect of their country being turned into a gateway for the export of plastics to the rest of Africa.
Njehu says “this is not solely a Greenpeace petition, it is a people’s petition. The number of people who have signed the document so far shows there is lots of concern among the public.”
But the campaigners are facing an uphill struggle.
Organised opposition
The American Chemistry Council has long experience of lobbying policymakers to stop or slow action on climate change, and strip back regulations that aren’t in the commercial interests of its corporate members.
The ACC is backed by fossil fuel companies including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, Total and BP and major agri-chemical companies including Bayer, BASF, FMC and Corteva.
Its beneficiaries include the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), which has claimed there is no “no scientific consensus concerning global warming”, and Republican Senator and infamous climate science denier James Inhofe. The ACC is also affiliated with the American Legislative Exchange Council, which works with corporations including ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, Peabody Energy, and Reynolds Tobacco to weaken regulations in state-level legislation.
As the negotiations progress, Kenya’s environmental campaigners will be hoping their politicians’ plastic pollution promises are sufficiently weighty to avoid them backsliding under such immense organised pressure.
Must reads from the region
Africa’s path toward energy security is away from fossil fuels, Oluwaseun Oguntuase, Africa Report
“The future is clear: the direction of travel for Africa is away from fossil fuels,” argues Oguntuase, from the Centre for Environmental Studies and Sustainable Development at Lagos State University. Yet the issue of stranded assets barely registers on African nations’ policy agendas he says -- that must change if governments are going to work out how to run a continent without oil.
Kenya should speak to Britain as an equal as climate summit draws closer, Mohamed Adow, The Standard
Kenya and Britain have a long and problematic relationship. But “Kenyans can proudly proclaim [the country’s] climate leadership”, argues the Director of Nairobi-based thinktank Power Shift Africa. That’s why, in advance of COP26, Kenyan officials should “tell the truth: Britain is failing on climate leadership, and the world needs you to step up to the challenge.”
Recovery plans are neither green nor fair to the poor, says Christian Aid, Maddy Fry, Church Times
So far, coronavirus economic rescue packages have been tokenistically green at best, says a new report from Christian Aid. That means they are hurting poor nations the most. Countries from the G20 group should cancel debt repayments for poorer countries, phase out fossil-fuel subsidies, and aid and export credits should be used mainly to support renewable energy, it recommends.
Vanessa Nakate: The Global South is not on the front page but it is on the front line, Euronews
“We cannot eat coal, we cannot drink oil. No one serves fossil fuels at the dining table,”, climate activist Nakate says in a wide-ranging interview. “Honestly, I was surprised to learn that climate change was a problem, because at school it was taught as though it was, either, in the past, or in the far future that we don't have to worry about. We are all living in this comfort that climate change isn’t here yet. But it is here, people are being impacted now,” she says.
What else I have been reading
The Leader the WTO Needs, Mo Ibrahim, Kevin Watkins, Mary Robinson, Project Syndicate
In this open letter, three representatives of top non-government organizations, philanthropists, and business leaders argue that Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is uniquely well placed to lead the WTO, as it rises to the twenty-first-century challenges posed by poverty, inequality, climate change, and – more immediately – the COVID-19 pandemic.
Who we are
From A Climate Correspondent is a weekly newsletter run by four journalists exploring the climate crisis from around the globe.
Lou Del Bello is an energy and climate journalist based in Delhi, India.
Jocelyn Timperley is a climate journalist based in San José, Costa Rica.
India Bourke is an environment journalist based in London, UK.
Mat Hope is investigative journalist based in London, UK and Nairobi, Kenya.
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