Industry goes on global offensive against environmentalists

Several industry sectors have begun efforts to counteract recent gains by environmentalists on international and trade issues, ranging from preemptive attempts to block charitable foundations from funding environmentalists to the use of internet “intelligence” collection agencies to track and potentially cripple activists’ efforts on a global scale, according to industry officials and confidential industry strategy documents.

Environmentalists say the new initiatives constitute an unprecedented offensive on their ability to engage in the debate over the effect of international trade, as well as economic and political globalization, on the environment.

Industry officials by and large defend their effort, saying that the measures are legal and necessary in order to keep track of the numerous campaigns environmentalists have launched in the international arena.

According to documents obtained by Inside EPA (a publication of the Environmental Protection Agency), Sony Co. this summer prepared an “action plan” for counteracting the efforts of several domestic and international environmental groups — including Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. The plan includes such activities as “pre-funding intervention” and creates a “detailed monitoring and contact network” to track the activities of these groups.

Sony presented the document during a July technology sector meeting in Brussels on the so-called “WEE” directive—a European Union proposal that would phase out a raft of toxic substances in electronics and would require manufacturers to take back their products for recycling once their useful consumer life is over. The WEE initiative has been heavily lobbied by several US environmental groups, but bitterly opposed by most multinational electronics firms.

The Sony paper and sources close to the issue say the monitoring network would employ one of the dozens of new internet “intelligence” agencies — such as London-based Infonics PLC — that monitor chat rooms, email lists, electronic bulletin boards, online news services, newsgroups and other sources of public information for specific data requested by a company or industry group. This information includes press releases and news stories, discussions of particular issues and campaigns, and overall strategy, and is typically compiled in digest form for subscribers to the service.

Although sources with Infonics were not available for comment, the company has been involved in international environmental issues in the past, most notably when it was hired by Royal Dutch Shell, Inc. to polish Shell’s corporate image after the Nigerian military executed a local environmentalist who was fighting to require Shell to address contamination.

An industry official says “pre-funding intervention” means providing groups with industry data prior to the beginning of their campaigns to ensure “they have good information” about company products and practices. But an observer familiar with industry efforts says it likely refers to a growing movement in the business community to take industry problems with activists’ agendas directly to donors, charitable foundations and companies that sponsor the environmental organizations, in an effort to stall the campaigns before they even commence.

Sources say the Sony paper only highlights what some contend is a growing movement in the industry to try to cripple environmentalists and other activists organizations because of their demands on trade issues. Sources also point to a new website —truthabouttrade.com — that was reportedly set up by the agribusiness sector in response to last year’s protests at the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle. The organizers of the site have collected a list of environmental groups that took part in the protests, their sponsors, and a list of “myths” about trade and environment and their rebuttals —including charges that global warming is not a real phenomenon and that the government should not protect certain species from extinction due to human activities.

Environmentalists say the site is a clear attempt to intimidate charitable foundations into not providing the groups with funds. And while the groups’ site stops short of actually calling for the foundations to halt funding for these groups, it does say “we intend to shine a very bright light on these groups, and hold them accountable for their actions.”

Activists say the efforts could set a dangerous precedent, and warn of an industry “Big Brother” mentality that seems to be becoming more prevalent in the business community. One observer says the Sony strategy also appears to be the first example of a coordinated, international effort by business to monitor and counteract activists’ efforts.

Several sources say that prior to the Seattle demonstrations, much of the industry did not view environmentalists working on trade issues as a threat. But after protesters — led in large part by environmental and labor groups — successfully shut down the WTO meetings and their subsequent wins in the realm of public opinion, many in the business community have begun to take notice and are actively seeking a way to address the situation.

Source: Inside EPA Weekly Report

13 indicted in biggest lab fraud in American history

By Cat Lazaroff

Dallas, Texas, Sept. 22, (ENS)— An environmental laboratory falsified test results at thousands of Superfund sites across the United States, the US Department of Justice said Thursday. Thirteen former employees of the now closed lab have been indicted in what federal authorities are calling the biggest case of laboratory fraud in the nation’s history.

The falsified tests could mean that some sites now listed as uncontaminated could hold harmful chemicals and other pollutants, federal officials said. But they emphasized that so far, none of the sites they have retested have been found to contain health hazards.

Intertek Testing Services Environmental Labs, Inc. (ITS), was a full service environmental testing laboratory that analyzed samples of air, liquids and soil as a subcontractor for federal, state and local government agencies, as well as private environmental consulting and engineering firms.

Between January 1994 and December 1997, ITS analyzed more than 59,000 separate environmental projects, involving as many as 250,000 separate tests. The company charged about $35.7 million for those tests.

Most of the test sites are in Texas, where the ITS lab was located, or other Western states.

The Department of Justice, which investigated the firm on behalf of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other agencies, charges that ITS falsified testing data to hide miscalibrated instruments that did not meet quality control standards.

“These fraudulent acts were committed with the specific intent to save time and money that would otherwise have been spent on properly maintaining the testing equipment,” or repeating failed tests, the Justice Department said in a release.

ITS also boosted its business by fraudulently producing what appeared to be acceptable environmental sample analysis data, the department charged. The result: millions of dollars in taxpayer money paid for inadequate tests.

“Regulatory agencies and private companies must be able to rely on analyses performed by independent testing laboratories,” said Lois Schiffer, assistant attorney general for the environment. “When a laboratory fails to follow basic scientific protocol, this can undermine the integrity of environmental protection efforts.”

Each of the 13 former ITS employees is charged with helping to alter data or present fraudulent reports between 1988 and 1997. The defendants are charged with various counts of mail fraud, wire fraud and presenting false claims. They face possible lengthy jail terms and fines ranging from $1 million to $7.5 million.

Martin Dale Jeffus, a former ITS vice president and the defendant facing the largest number of charges, could face a maximum term of 155 years in jail for 30 counts of fraud crimes.

Other ITS employees charged include managers, supervisors and lab analysts. In a statement, London based ITS said the tests were performed by a subsidiary that is now out of business.

“While this employee conduct was unacceptable, we want to emphasize that the EPA has stated it concurs with our findings that the tests were not substantially in error and that none of the tested sites has been found to pose a risk to safety or health,” said Richard Nelson, chief executive officer of ITS.

ITS officials said the company voluntarily disclosed to the EPA that there were problems at the plant in Richardson, Texas, as far back as January 1998.

At that time, ITS tried to win legal protection through the agency’s voluntary disclosure program, but was turned down, the company said.

Paul Coggins, the US attorney for the Northern District of Texas who will help prosecute the case, said “none of the data coming out of this Richardson lab can be relied on,” as tests were “falsified on a grand scale.”

“Too many employees and ex-employees have told investigators that the falsifications were routine and commonplace. We almost certainly have some property owners who don’t even realize today that this lab did the test,” said Coggins.

“Those who would gamble with our environment will face the full force of the law,” Coggins said. “The most dangerous contaminant to our environment is greed.”

South calls on North to pay “ecological debt”

By Brian Kenety

Prague, Czech Republic, Sept. 25 (IPS)— The alliance is so new that even its founders have trouble remembering the exact name, but on the concept they are crystal clear: the developing world is owed an incalculable ecological, social and economic debt by the industrialized nations.

Originally to be called the Ecological Debt Creditors Club of Third World Communities, a sarcastic reference to the Paris Club of creditor nations, the newly formed “Southern People’s Ecological Debt Creditors Alliance’’ has taken the now familiar demand for the cancellation of unsustainable debt a step further.

The Alliance argues that what they call the “illegitimate financial debt’’ of the south pales in comparison to what developing countries have paid out during European colonization, in decades of unfair trading practices, and now in the era of globalization.

Each year the developing world gives Western countries nine times more in debt repayments than it receives in aid, according to Jubilee 2000, a collection of environmental, faith-based, human rights, and development organizations campaigning for the cancellation of unpayable debt by year end 2000.

The international environmental group Friends of the Earth (FoE), which is part of the Jubilee 2000, defines ecological debt as “the cumulative responsibility of industrialized countries for the destruction caused by their production and consumption patterns.’’

Natural wealth extracted by the north at the expense of southern people has contaminated their natural heritage and sources of sustenance, argues FoE, which is also part of the new informal alliance.

“The ecological debt also includes the illegitimate appropriation of the atmosphere and the planet’s absorption capacity by the industrialized world. This debt is the result of a development model that is being spread throughout the world and which threatens more sustainable local economies,’’ said FoE in a background report on the issue.

The idea of an ecological debt due the south is not new, said Aurora Donoso, a member of the new alliance who came to Prague, where the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are holding their annual meetings Sep. 19 - 28, to represent the Ecuadorean pressure group Acción Ecólogia. But this week it has “been reborn’’ she told IPS, along with a commitment by NGOs assembled here to link economic, social and environmental issues relevant to development.

The idea for the new Alliance came about in Prague workshops this past weekend, organized as part of “A Different View,” a public forum organized by FoE, the Eastern European environmental and financial watchdog group CEE Bankwatch, and Jubilee 2000, and which was sponsored by Czech non-governmental organizations.

Donoso, who sat on a panel discussing the issue along with activists from Columbia, India, and Nigeria, said that it was important to change the whole nature of the debate over debt cancellation, both in the streets of Prague, and in the minds of peoples from the developing countries.

“The external debt has been paid twice over in this absurd economic game (of borrowing from the IMF and World Bank to service that debt) which only serves to impoverish us more,’’ she said.

“It has been paid in human lives, in cheap labor and even in slavery; in the exploitation of our lands and people,’’ she said.

In a pamphlet titled “External Debt, Ecological Debt: Who Owes Whom,” Acción Ecólogia demands that the industrialized societies and international financial institutions “recognize that the external debt of the Third World countries has already been paid, as it is minimal in comparison with the ecological debt of the industrialized countries, which is measured in terms of its devastating social, cultural and environmental impacts.”

The group also demands that value be placed on the preservation of peoples, cultures and natural resources.

Protesters here argue that heavily indebted poor countries are caught in a downward spiral of debt service, which diverts resources away from economic development and further dooms them to poverty.

Forced to meet debt payments, countries sacrifice health, education and environment programs. Africa, for example, spends four times as much on debt payments than it does on healthcare.

José Padua, a member of a Brazilian NGO calling for greater democracy and sustainability in economic issues, told an audience here that from 1989 to 1999, his government had earned 130 billion dollars by privatizing state firms following on IMF loan conditions and recommendations and had paid out 230 billion dollars in servicing its debt.

Statistics like these lead Donoso to say that “the number one export of Latin America is dollars.”