Monday, October 02, 2006
Rarely do I read an article that makes me physically grimace. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/02/world/africa/02ivory.html.
For those of you too lazy to read, it is about the disposal of toxic waste from a European oil services company. The disposal price was too high in europe, so they shipped to to cote d'ivoire where it was disposed of by local companies by simply dumping it it local landfills. Brutal stuff. But not suprising. Global opportunities without global regulation is going to lead to the "offshoring" of of tasks that are expensive in countries with tight environmental regulations to those with little or no enforcement. This story is noteworthy because it is glaring and involves injured babies, but it is part of a paradigm that is much larger.
For those of you too lazy to read, it is about the disposal of toxic waste from a European oil services company. The disposal price was too high in europe, so they shipped to to cote d'ivoire where it was disposed of by local companies by simply dumping it it local landfills. Brutal stuff. But not suprising. Global opportunities without global regulation is going to lead to the "offshoring" of of tasks that are expensive in countries with tight environmental regulations to those with little or no enforcement. This story is noteworthy because it is glaring and involves injured babies, but it is part of a paradigm that is much larger.
# posted by 8yearoldsdude @ 1:17 PM 
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I agree. The picture of the very alert baby covered in sores is what did it to me. --EWK
# posted by 
: 1:39 PM
: 1:39 PM
I think there are a couple other things to note about this story. One is that the NYTimes is writing the story fully 6 weeks after the problem became apparent in Abidjan (other news orgs have been reporting consistently since the dumping). Another is that the Ivoirian government is a particularly bad one, by which I mean one that has tolerated if not instigated the economic and ethnic breakdown of the country. I think most other countries in the world, including African ones, would be up on a platform screaming for medical help, investigations, etc. My impression is that there has been less of that than might be expected. --EWK
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# posted by : 5:10 PM
: 5:10 PM << Home
