Deadly Nexus of Rulers, Regulators and Polluters

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RULERS-REGULATORS-POLLUTERS

DEADLY COALITION REVEALED

Rulers of poor countries are not innocent.

Nor they are naïve of harsh realities of this world.

They are brutally smart.

They very well know how to protect their environment but they don’t want to do this.

They can’t afford to swallow the fury of giant industrialists, big corporations, rogue mafias of pollution and above all the vested interests that just want to earn more and more by spending peanuts.

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Big polluters are not huge in number but they are so powerful that no government in any poor country can even talk against them.

They can topple the government with their powerful kicks and kickbacks.

They just want cosmetic activities –like fairy tales - to go on in poor countries to dupe all; you, me and rest of enlightened lot of this world.

No formal coalition but most deadly They all are not in one forum, in a club or in a league to jointly pollute the environment of poor countries. They are dispersed in all poor countries of Asia, Africa and other poor regions of the world. Their vested interests are same that’s why there is nothing uncommon in them. They adopt same tactics to crush every attempt that means to protect the environment.

They know that if a green effort is made, it will be a direct hit on their financial, political and social interests. They have to install a treatment plant in their factory and pay the extra cost. Or they have to stop selling adulterated fuel and it will be a big cut in their earning. Or they have to dispose of infectious waste of their hospital and pay the extra cost of incineration.

In short for every effort to control pollution they have to pay its price. That’s why they don’t want any kind of serious effort for the protection of environment in poor countries where they are very powerful. As a result environmental care has become nasty joke there.

Rulers, regulators and polluters are dancing naked to hit the environment and no one can dare to stop them.

Its outcomes are more than several. Its outcomes are more than lethal. Some of them are as under.

Poor eat vehicular emissions There is no exact data of number of vehicles in poor countries.

Obviously it should not be because of absence of any proper data management system there.

So it is difficult to tell you how many vehicles emit smoke and noise more than the allowable limits.

If we believe in rough estimates, hardly 20 per cent vehicles in poor countries emit within national environmental quality standards while rest of the 80 per cent violate most of the standards. The 20 per cent vehicles which emit smoke and noise within limits are not divine 2

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products. They don’t do so because of their proper maintenance and care. They emit less because they are quite new and of top level car brands. Their engine has all green options to ensure smoke and noise emissions from it within holy green limits.

Shameless adulterated fuel The main reason of excessive vehicular emissions in most of poor countries is not simply the lack of maintenance and proper care of vehicles.

Another big reason is open and unabashed sale of adulterated oil in such countries. Such nasty fuel adds poisonous gases in vehicular emissions, far above the standards. There is no strict system of check and balance to control sale of adulterated fuel. Those who sell such fuel are so powerful that no one can stop them. Even if any regulatory agency arrests any of them he gets acquitted by offering fake evidence and fully enjoys the faulty and obsolete prosecution system of poor countries.

Give bribe and get fitness certificate In almost all poor countries there is no need to keep your vehicle in proper condition to get a fitness certificate for it. This may be good news for those who love to use antique vehicles.

The authority which issues fitness certificate is plagued with corruption. So much so, that its staffers take the salary just as a formality. Just to show they need it. Just to show they make their living with their salary. Just to pretend to be honest.

A vehicle owner can easily get a fitness certificate by paying bribe from ten to hundred dollars.

After that he drives his vehicle on road emitting smoke and noise while damn caring any f*cking limits. No one is to check his vehicle. If he is caught for polluting the environment he can easily escape by showing the fitness certificate which he got after paying the bribe.

More interestingly the traffic cops who check smoke emitting vehicles on road are not heavenly beings. They are also equally and honestly corrupt. They let polluting vehicles go after receiving a few bucks as bribe. This is happening in every poor country.

Green laws lick the boots of giant industrialists Industries in poor countries operate as if they are doing great favor to their country. They champion to be a big support to their economy. They want to be untouchable and free from levy of each law because they claim to be contributing in growth of their economy.

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Industrial development is rarely done in poor countries. That’s why whoever opens a new factory he is taken as champion of patriotism and great benefactor to his country. So how come someone asks industrialists to comply with environmental laws in their operations.

I won’t do otherwise I will quit Most of the industries in poor countries look to government to get treatment plant free of cost to treat their effluent before releasing it directly into any water body including river and sea.

Their governments are poorer and they don’t allocate funds for this purpose because that is not their damn job. So they don’t provide funds and industries brazenly release their toxic effluent directly into the river and sea. No one can control them. They have lame excuse of lack of funds to comply with green laws.

Industries also save themselves from green laws by contending that economy is weakening day by day and their business is also facing slowdown. If they are forced to spend money to control pollution from their operation they will shift their industry to any neighboring country where cost of production is not so much high and they can afford to comply with green laws of that country.

As a result environmental regulators of poor countries don’t take strict action against polluting industries and all the time keep requesting them not to pollute, please not to pollute and that‘s all.

Spit on the face of regulator In some rare cases if an environmental regulator takes any bold step against a polluting industry even then the owner of that factory uses all his high contacts and stops the regulator to take any further action. File of such polluting industry is then sent in archive to remain under the thick layer of dust.

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Secondly most of the regulatory staff in poor countries is financially corrupt and shelve the case of environmental violation of an industry on receipt of a handsome amount as bribe.

Big kick on the ass of development Development in poor countries is considered as a divine thing.

Those who install development projects of whatever type they are treated great benefactor to their country. They are not strictly asked to submit environmental impact assessment (EIA) report of their project before installing it.

Nor the owners of development project have that much green sense that they themselves submit EIA of their project. As a result they do development without taking care of environment.

A few projects submit such report but that is because their financiers and donors want it otherwise they also don’t follow the rule of getting environmental clearance before starting a new project.

As a result hardly 10 per cent projects in poor countries are environmentally cleared while the rest are done by harming the environment as much as they can and nobody can stop the great benefactors of the nation.

Most of the owners of development projects instead of getting green clearance in its true sense simply pay bribe to environmental authority of their area and easily get such clearance without fulfilling its green requirements.

This is the most viable solution in poor countries to get the things done. Are they lucky or unlucky; please don’t forget to give your comments at the end of this post. So keep staying with me.

Keep littering civic waste Proper collection of entire civic waste is still a flight of fancy in poor countries.

Communities living below the poverty line have no problem with mismanagement of their civic waste. Lower and middle class communities though raise objection on not collecting their civic waste but agencies working for this job are equally lethargic, inefficient and corrupt.

Most of these agencies are poorly staffed where hiring is made without any merit. Financial corruption and bad governance is also common in waste collection agencies in poor countries.

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As a result they don’t do their job properly and almost 60 per cent civic waste in poor countries litter around while 40 per cent is collected with a poorly managed system and mostly dumped in open areas. Eventually it is burnt to get rid of it. Its open burning also creates air pollution and people have to eat it by inhaling smoke of poisonous gases.

Hospitals are over-smart Most of the manpower of medical sector is highly educated. Right But at the time of following environmental laws they become over-smartly innocent. They show their unawareness on how to safely dispose of infectious waste of hospitals and throw it like civic waste.

In big cities of poor countries a few incinerators work to cater the infectious waste disposal need of hundreds and hundreds of hospitals and clinics. So most of the hospitals dispose of their waste like ordinary civic waste and easily avoid paying incineration fee.

Here again environmental regulators of these countries also keep silence over this violation on receiving bribe from hospitals or from those who collect the hospital waste and unsafely recycle most of the medical related items from it without following any safety standards.

Recycling industry is a thing of art In Pakistan there is only one well known setup of recycling of solid waste. It is an NGO that champions to be upholder of recycling. Mostly people take its activities related to art. They talk about it just to show they do have artistic sense. Does it sound strange? But it is happening there in its literal sense.

In other poor countries situation is not much different. There is no concept of recycling of waste. It is treated as if it is an art to recycle a tin as flower pot. They call it a luxurious activity.

They presume common man has nothing to do with it. As a result most of the recyclable items that are in millions of tons - are treated as solid waste and dumped into landfills and cannot be made reusable.

Secondly there is no demand of recycling in poor countries. If any business invests it in it has to suffer losses. Despite being poor, people feel shame to use recycled items because of their cultural restrictions for not using throwaways.

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On the other hand the poorest people don’t know its benefits nor can they afford to buy recycled items. Hence in near future there is no any prospect of success of recycling business in poor countries till people become fully aware of their benefits.

Meaningless awareness Environmental awareness in poor countries is done in random ways. Government and nongovernmental organizations, educational institutions and community groups do awareness activities at their own level but they do very randomly. Whenever they have budget, opportunity, reason or time to conduct an awareness activity they do it. In their activities more focus is given on fun and entertainment.

On another extreme they make quite boring activities of lengthy seminars and bookish workshops without deciding what they have to disseminate for which purpose.

More interestingly those who impart environmental awareness are either very technically qualified and can’t communicate the message of environment in simpler terms or they are so shallow in approach that their green sermons remain limited to tree planting and garbage collection. They don’t have knowledge of the community aspect of environmental care.

Green regulators eat, sleep and drink bribe At the pattern of advance countries the green regulators of poor countries are either called environmental protection agency or pollution control board. Whatever they are called but their function is same.

They remain slave to their political boss - environmental minister - and keep dancing to his tunes. If political boss asks them to close eyes over any serious environmental violation they can’t afford to disobey him. If they do so they have to leave their job.

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Hiring in green regulatory offices is made purely on political basis. Merit in appointments is killed in day light. Political affiliation becomes the divine criteria for hiring on every green job.

As a result most of the green regulators in poor countries fail to protect the environment of their jurisdiction. How can they do this with a political lot of inefficient people as their staff members?

Secondly being government department salaries of their staff are very low and they also lack professionalism to stay committed with their profession and easily compromise on rules if a polluter pays them money as bribe. They happily shelve the case of his environmental violation without feeling any grudge of conscience.

They put their conscience in deep freezer to never take it out again. Bribe may be in hundreds or thousands of dollars depending upon the level of the bribe-receiving staffer.

Legislators damn care environment Legislators in poor countries have nothing to do with environment.

No one of them wants to become environment minister because in other departments there are higher chances of corruption and embezzlement. Environment sector is in least priorities in every poor country so its regulatory department receives minimum funds. Hence its environment minister cannot enjoy that much perks and benefits as his colleagues can enjoy in other departments.

So a legislator with no or minimum political clout is made environment minister. Eventually his main job is confined to extracting as much political and financial benefits from environment sector as possible. He gives free hand to his subordinate bosses in green regulatory department to mint for him as much money as possible and hire people from his party to please the workers of the party which he belongs to.

Political cronies are green bosses In India almost all the heads of pollution control board (PCB) are appointed on political basis. In each estate of India, the ruling party appoints its favorite as head of PCB. For legislation neither environment regulatory department has that much efficiency to make new and stringent laws to control pollution nor does any upper or lower House of legislatures has any interest to pass such laws. They are mostly interested to make laws which can make them popular and help win next elections.

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So legislatures prefer to do activities which create an impression that government is doing great job for poor. As far as environmental care is concerned even poor don’t want any environmental care and they just want two times bread and a house to live. They don’t want clean water they just want water to quench their thirst. In most of these countries there is dearth of drinking water, housing, sanitation, food and jobs. So governments of poor countries remain busy combating this shortage and never think about environmental care.

Dumb media Media give minimum coverage to environmental issues. To some extent media is right in its stance with the argument that no one fondly reads their green stories. People of poor countries are least concerned with environmental issues. They have much more grave issues to combat and suffer from their effects. Hence no advertiser gives them ads for such pages which cover environmental stories.

In Pakistan not a single reporter of any newspaper has the beat of environment exclusively.

Most reporters do work for this beat (subject) in addition to several hot-demand beats like crime, fashion, showbiz, politics etc. Situation in electronic media is also same. Need not to say about green blogging because most of the people in poor countries don’t know what blogging is. So how come they know about green blogging.

Green NGOs are mostly dark brown A few genuine NGOs work very honestly for the green cause in poor countries while majority of them just work to mint money. They receive funds from foreign or local donors and spend less than half of the amount genuinely while the rest they use for huge salaries of their staff, for vehicles and administrative expenses.

Moreover, many green NGOs don’t hesitate to embezzle the funds because most of their projects work in far flung areas and remain out of reach of donors who can’t keep vigil over them regularly. They hardly visit there once or twice. As a result such NGOs have free hand to misuse the project money for their own benefits and sometimes it may be millions of dollars.

Green activists are impotent In every poor country there are a few hundred genuine and sincere green activists but they can’t be heard because of their weaker position.

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In backward societies they are not regarded as important persons and no one listens to what they say. They don’t have huge following in communities because owing to fear factor communities mostly follow those who are rogues.

Owing to their lack of strong following government regulatory agencies don’t give them much importance nor can they pressurize legislators to make strong laws for green care. As a result their activities remain limited to protests, demonstrations, condemnation of polluters and that’s all.

Green courts want evidence Judicial sector of poor countries handles huge number of cases related to issues other than environment. As a result courts don’t have time to think about environment.

Secondly their main job is to hear the cases that are brought in the court so they can’t be blamed for environmental disaster in poor countries. Obviously courts are bound to hear only those cases that are brought for prosecution and 99 per cent of them are related to issues other than environment. Even if a few cases of environmental violations are brought in the courts they also lack evidence and remain in pending. As a result people don’t pin high hopes on courts for the solution of their environmental problems.

End of the story; poor are dying The inefficiency, corruption, mismanagement, malpractices, maladministration and bad governance in environment sector of poor countries bring on all types of pollution. Each type of pollution has huge negative impact on environment and on health of people both.

As a result water pollution makes them suffer from kidney cancer apart from several gastro and other disease. Air pollution affects their respiratory system and may cause lethal disease like cancer. Land pollution causes myriad of endemic diseases like typhoid, pneumonia, malaria etc.

Noise pollution weakens their nervous system and may bring on deafness in them.

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Pollution as a whole keep them pining in absolute poverty and never let them improve their standard of living. So the end result is that poor people die because of deadly coalition of rulers, regulators and polluters in poor countries.

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