Topic 16: Grassroots Concepts for Sustainability Coined by Environmental Justice Organisations
Using cases from your experience, please describe if a particular concept of environmental justice has been employed to activate the resistance.
Explain if this concept has been adopted from an academic context or, on the contrary, it has been proposed by the activists mobilised in that case.
I would like to build on my recent experience in Nairobi, Kenya, where I have visited and interviewed the locals about the Dandora dumpsite – one of the biggest and most controversial landfills in Africa.
Dandora dump is a sprawling dumpsite, over 30 acres, at the heart of Nairobi slums of Korogocho, Baba Ndogo, Mathare and Dandora. It opened in 1975 with World Bank funds and was deemed full by 2001. Yet it continues to operate, and people at the very bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder come here as their last hope to make living from scavenging the waste, but in the same time polluting themselves tremendously.
For me this case is a very accurate example of the environmental injustice (environmental racism) where the poor societies of Nairobi are still being treated badly by dumping the waste from the whole great Nairobi, polluting them with toxics and explaining it as a best solutions for all because the poor people actually get food from there, scavange for materials to sell to the recyclers.
Dumping in Dandora is unrestricted and includes industrial, agricultural, domestic and medical waste. Studies[1] have confirmed the presence of dangerous elements such as lead, mercury, cadmium and PCBs which are seriously hazardous for humans.
Due to the underveleopment of scientific bodies in Kenya but also due to political clash the popular epidemiology finds also its way to prove the sicknesses and mortalities. The official statistics are not full therefore the “lay” knowledge as valid as the official one here and fits into street science.
Fortunately it is also true that Nairobi is a capital with much international regards and a seat of the EU Envoriomental Programme (UNEP) therefore it would be strange if the biggest environmental organization would neglect this environmental catastrophe happening just 8 km from its headquarters. UNEP has commissioned couple of studies[2][3] show dangerously high levels levels of heavy metals in the surrounding environment and in in local residents. Lead and cadmium levels were 13,500 ppm and 1,058 ppm respectively, compared to the action levels in the Netherlands of 150 ppm/5ppm for these heavy metals.
The Stockholm Convention on hazardous pollution, which Kenya has ratified, requires actions aimed at eliminating these pollutants. The promise to act was agreed by the government, interested stakeholders and the civil society. Many global NGOs have called upon Kenyan government representatives and stakeholders to honor the integrity of the Convention and keep the promise of reduction and elimination of those pollutants. Unfortunately, as I am writing this material, nothing has been done. On the contrary, more and more waste is addressed to the landfill more and more is being permanently burned, more toxic substances leaching to the waters and air. The Nairobi River also passes besides the dumpsite according the UNEP aggravating the situation. The Dandora dumpsite is a sad picture of a multiple tragedy.
City Council of Nairobi was to decommission the dumpsite in 2012, after 8 years of planning. However, conflict between the council and the Kenya Airports Authority over the relocation of the dumpsite to Ruai has brought the process to a grinding halt. The community sees that there will be no easy end to this largest and most flarangt violations to human right and environment in the country. The dumpsite exists in contravention of several provisions to the Consitution of Kenya.
There is a social dilemma. As I visited the dumpsite and the local communities I discovered that thousands of people rely their daily income on the dumpsite. Every day, scores of people scavange through the contaminated garbage to look for food, plastic and metal scraps to sell to recyclers. They get paid very little but still enough for some to stick to this activity and not even try to change. It is even reported by the St John Informal School in Korogocho (the neighboring slum) that some kinds escape school to come to the dumpsite to work. Due to high poverty in the area, some parents even encourage their children to go to “Mukuru” as they call the dumpsite. While some critics will defend the habit, it is disastrous short term solution to a larger, complex and longer social and economic problem.
Public participation must be at the core of the decommissioning this environmental and social injustice. There was a coalition formed under the “Inter-Religious Committee Against Dandora Dumpsite” in conjunction with national human rights institutions. It was set up in 2005 due to problem of exploited workers and social problem but then later in 2008 it demands were even supported thanks to the studies commissioned by UNEP and other organizations showing the serious environment problem. So here we have an example of a local resistance being mobilized due to the social injustice later also adopted from an academic context.
The local communities understood they must be participants in the change process and that the “advocacy and the struggle for a people’s liberation must be spearheaded by the people themselves” as wrote the Committee leader Oluoch Japheth Ogola – a journalist working for the St. John Catholic Church in Korogocho. The Committee main slogans were: “The society equally needs to be endowed with adequate environmental etiquetee. We should ensure that our own little neighborhoods are clean. Other stakeholders therefore need to come up with suggestions which can help us surmount this danger of the dumpsite”. I would mention that such attitude is very peaceful and proactive. They do not condemn those stakeholders who actually still contaminate the area. The Committee has put a number of proposals to solve the problem. It included closing the dumpsite, recultivation, relocation of waste management, proper recycling facilities. Unfortunately the developments of those ideas seems to be dead due to financial and political reasons.
We are going to put now this case in the EJOLT ATLAS to give another boost for the community to fight against the dumpsite
[1] A Study on Waste Incineration activities in Nairobi that Release Dioxin nad Furan into the Environment, ENVILEAD, KENYA 2005
[2] Implications of the Dandora Municipal Dumping Site in Nairobi, UNEP, Kenya 2007
[3] Contamination of chicken eggs near the Dandora dumpsite in Kenya by dioxins, PCBs and hexachlorobenzene