Author: Hafiz Noor Shams

The Blacksmith Institute today comes up with a list of 10 most polluted places on Earth:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A Russian city where chemical weapons were once manufactured and a town in Zambia’s copper mining belt are among the 10 most polluted places on Earth, a U.S. environmental group said on Wednesday.

The list was compiled by the New York-based nonprofit group the Blacksmith Institute, which said the world’s pollution is sickening up to 1 billion people.

The 10 places were chosen by a board of experts from more than 35 nominated sites which in turn were filtered by the same board from a list of 300 sites. The full list is available at the group’s website. While no Southeast Asia country is listed in the top ten list, two Filipino sites were nominated. The two sites are Mount Diwalwal and Marilao; both were caused by mineral extraction activities. Yes, no Kuala Lumpur despite the fact the air quality hit 108 in the Air Pollution Index yesterday.

In the top ten list itself, most of them come from former Soviet state members.

On top of the list is Chernobyl, Ukraine. Of course, that relates to the 1986 nuclear meltdown disaster. Years ago, I highlighted a site that has pictures of the ghost town. Please do re-read that entry. The report is here.

Second is Dzerzhinsk, Russia. The area is Russian chemical manufacturing center. Not just that, it was the production center of chemical weapon. Much of the waste from the manufacturing operation was improperly disposed of and it affected the air, the land and the water badly. Read the full report here.

The next site is Bajos de Haina, Dominican Republic. Source of pollution: smelter. The area is highly comtaminated with lead. More here.

Fourth is Kawbe, Zambia. Cause: mineral mining. Located in an area called Copperbelt, it was on of Zambia’s major source of income. All minerals like cadmium, lead and zinc were heavily mined by the British during colonial period. The detail is available here.

Fifth is La Oroya, Peru. Cause: Mining and smelting activities. Read it up here.

Linfen of People’s Republic of China is sixth. The cause of pollution: the thriving coal industry. Do I have to say “read it here” this time?

Seventh is Maaluu-Suu, Kyrgyzstan. There was a uranium plant here and the waste was placed here. Also, the area played a very vital role in the production of the first Soviet nuclear bomb. Here!

Eighth is Norilsk, Russia. It’s the site of the largest nickel-copper-palladium deposits in the world according to Wikipedia. How polluted the area is? Well, I quote the report:

…the snow is black, the air tastes of sulfur…

Also, interestingly, Norilsk is off limit to foreigners:

Since November 2001, Norilsk has been shut to foreigners, one of 90 “closed towns” in Russia where Soviet-levels of secrecy persist.

On the nine rung is Ranipet, India. Source: tannery. As you might have guessed, it’s here.

The final entry is Rudnaya Pristan, Russia. The source here also concerns lead mining. Read it here.

There you go. Five of the top ten places are in former Soviet territories.

So, a company related to Rimbunan Hijau through its chairman, Hiew King Tiong, has taken over 20% stake of Nanyang group from MCA:

PETALING JAYA: Rimbunan Hijau group founder and chairman Tan Sri Tiong Hiew King has taken control of Nanyang Press Holdings Bhd through his private company, Ezywood Options Sdn Bhd.

Ezywood Options paid RM64.7mil to acquire Huaren Management Sdn Bhd’s 21.02% stake in the Chinese newspaper at RM4.20 per share on Oct 9.

Ezywood Options now owns 44.76% of Nanyang and will be required to extend a mandatory takeover offer for the remaining shares of Nanyang it does not already own.

Now, it’s easier for Rimbunan Hijau to prevent news of its illegal, unsustainable and unethical timber harvesting activities in Papua New Guinea from reaching the Malaysian public, especially Chinese Malaysians.

While that happens, The Australian reports that the logging company is hiring specialists to repair its image:

WHAT do you do when your logging company can’t shake off continuing negative publicity about illegal logging and human rights abuses, generated by a never-ending series of reports by international financial institutions, aid donors, journalists and non-government organisations?

If you are multinational logger Rimbunan Hijau, you call in a team of Australian spin doctors to give the company a makeover.

Rimbunan Hijau, a company controlled by Malaysian billionaire Hiew King Tiong, dominates forestry in Papua New Guinea. The company and its subsidiaries run five of PNG’s 12 largest logging projects, the country’s biggest sawmill and its only veneer plant. So when evidence continues to show most logging in PNG is illegal and unsustainable, fingers inevitably start pointing at Rimbunan Hijau.

Is this a pure coincidence, or a calculated move instead?

Another project violates a forest reserve without an Environment Impact Assessment:

PANGKOR: A company building an organic farm-cum-resort near Teluk Dalam is felling trees and levelling hills without an Environmental Impact Assessment report.

A visit by the New Straits Times to the 0.75ha tract of land at the North Pangkor Forest Reserve found excavators being used to level hills which were at least 30m high.

Trees felled in the area were chain-sawed into beams and used to build several structures there, while a pond was dug to pump out groundwater flowing along a water channel.

There is work going on to build a make-shift jetty on the beach using boulders, timber and sand from the forest reserve.

Is the Department of the Environment too weak for anything that many ignore the department altogether with impunity?

Last Sunday in the NST, I read an article that relates to the haze which we are currently experiencing. Unlike most articles which suggest nothing to solve this environmental problem, this particular article highlights a real solution. The solution is simple, cheap and long term in nature; it involves aiding the locals of Kalimantan and Sumatra to reduce the chances for nature to catch fire:

…a million hectares of peat forest was cleared for padi over a decade ago.

At the time, thousands of kilometres of canals were dug to keep the soil drained in the rainy season and irrigated during the dry.

But the peatland stood high above the adjacent rivers, so the canals only sucked them dry. The soils were not suitable for padi and drainage left the parched peat highly flammable.

In the El Nino-driven dry season of 1997-1998, this tinderbox went up in flames and enveloped the region in a shroud of haze.

The site was abandoned but continued to burn periodically through years of inaction, hitting Sarawak particularly hard.

Then three years ago, Malaysian non-governmental organisation Global Environment Centre (GEC), and Wetlands International Indonesia, began talking to locals about blocking off the canals.

The canals were so wide that each could fit a giant IMAX screen between its peaty walls, with space to spare. Together, they were draining millions of cubic metres of water from the area.

“All the experts said we’d need machines to block canals wider than two metres,” said GEC director Faizal Parish.

“If we had listened, all our money would have been spent on excavators.”

Instead they sat down with locals from the nearest villages, hardy and resourceful people, who’d carved out a life in this desolate corner of Borneo with few amenities.

The groups picked their brains for ideas and brought civil engineers into the talks with local communities and government agencies.

Project partners Wildlife Habitat Canada and Indonesia’s Forest Protection and Nature Conservation directorate were also involved.

And here was born the plan — to block the canals by hand using local techniques.

Each block consisted of three log walls to be built across the canal by a clever use of a lever system and the force of human weight.

Each wall would be 3.3 metres away from the next. The spaces between them were filled with sandbags to staunch the flow of water.

Construction of each block took 50 people, three months and countless trips on narrow boats lugging 25,000 sandbags to the site.

In total, seven blocks were rammed into place along two main canals and a smaller one.

The blocks have since raised the water level in the peatland.

There have been no fires in the area and the forest has started to recover. Locals are fishing in the blocked-off sections of the canal.

The project has protected a site roughly the size of Singapore from fires. As big as that seems, it is only a twentieth of the vast Mega Rice Project.

Instead of feeling frustrated and disappointed, it’s wise for the Malaysian and Singaporean governments to fund this project.