PESTICIDE manufacturers are being attacked for dragging their feet in funding an international clean-up of dangerous, out-of-date chemicals across Africa. The chemicals, stored in leaking drums in sheds, warehouses and in the open air, are poisoning crops and drinking water.
Last year, the World Bank’s Global Environment Facility agreed to put up $25 million for the Africa Stockpiles Programme, which aims to decontaminate the continent over 15 years, provided the companies who supplied the chemicals and aid agencies matched its funding. But last week a meeting in Brussels of CropLife International, which represents the largest companies, ended without a firm commitment to fund the programme.
CropLife, whose members include Bayer, BASF and Monsanto, promised in 1995 to “provide assistance for the disposal of stocks that they originally manufactured or supplied”. This week its chairman of obsolete stocks, Chris Waller, said members had helped clean up 3500 tonnes of chemicals to date, where the chemicals could be traced to individual companies.
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But Barbara Dinham of the Pesticide Action Network, which launched the Africa Stockpiles Programme in 2000, says there are at least 50,000 tonnes of obsolete pesticides in Africa. At current rates of decontamination, it will take more than a century to make them safe.
The programme wants initially to clear seven countries of obsolete pesticides, at a cost of $70 million. Dinham has asked the companies involved to provide at least $10 million. “We want to contribute,” says Waller, who admits that progress had been slow. He says companies are reluctant to go it alone without commitments from governments and aid donors.
Mali is among the most seriously affected countries. Hundreds of drinking wells there have been shut because they were poisoned by dieldrin, once used to fight locusts.