for more information contact:
Elizabeth Crowe, CWWG: (859) 986-0868
Monica Wilson, GAIA: (510) 524-4000 x104
for immediate release: Wednesday, September 25, 2002
Washington, D.C. and Manila, Philippines -- An international alliance today denounced the World Bank Group for promoting the construction of dirty technologies around the world.
The Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), of which the U.S.-based Chemical Weapons Working Group is a member, released a new report documenting the World Bank's continued funding of incineration, a polluting technology receiving intense criticism in many countries. The report, available on the web at www.no-burn.org, documents 156 World Bank Group projects in the last ten years that have promoted incineration. 26 of those projects were initiated since 2001.
"It's outrageous that an institution like the World Bank is using public money to destroy public health," said Von Hernandez, GAIA coordinator in the Philippines. Incinerators release a wide array of highly hazardous pollutants to the air, water and land. "The Bank must immediately stop funding incineration projects," Hernandez continued.
One set of pollutants of particular concern is known as Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), and includes dioxins, furans and PCBs. Incinerators are the world's primary source of dioxins, which have been shown to cause a wide range of cancers, immune system damage, and reproductive and developmental problems A recently concluded global treaty, the Stockholm Convention, seeks to eliminate the release of POPs, which are often handed down from mothers to unborn children.
"The World Bank Group's continued funding of incinerators, in spite of the Stockholm Convention, is a direct affront to the 122 nations who signed the Convention. The World Bank and International Finance Corporation are operating as if they are above international law," said Neil Tangri, the report's author. "It's particularly hypocritical that the World Bank is seeking funds to clean up POPs problems at the same time that it continues to create new ones." The report notes that the World Bank is engaged in several efforts to clean up existing concentrations of POPs but has refused to implement any restrictions on its own funding of incinerators.
In September 1999, the New York Times reported that James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank Group, had made a personal contribution of US$50,000 to an effort to prevent the construction of a mixed hazardous waste incinerator near his vacation home in the U.S. state of Wyoming. "Why is the World Bank exposing our communities to this polluting technology when its president tried to stop an incinerator near his own home?" asked Hernandez.
"Wherever incinerators are used, better alternatives exist," explains Monica Wilson of Essential Action in Washington, D.C. "Alternatives require a little ingenuity but much less expense than incinerators. They save resources, generate jobs and most importantly, protect public health."
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For more information on GAIA and incineration issues worldwide,
visit the GAIA website at www.no-burn.org.
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