Greenwashing and False Solutions Are Toxic for Human Rights | Geneva Toxic Free Talks

About this Session

In the words of the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, the Earth today faces a triple planetary crisis of climate disruption, nature and biodiversity loss, pollution and waste. We need all hands on deck. In response, we have seen an increase in efforts and actions from different sectors of society that aim to address these.

At the same time however, more and more practices involving toxic substances are presented as offering solutions to environmental crises, while at the same time reducing or overlooking their negative impacts on humans and their environment.

This session, taking place on the sidelines of the 54^th session of the Human Rights Council, aimed at understanding how greenwashing and false solutions that misuse such substances undermine human rights. Launching the 2023 edition of the Geneva Toxic Free Talks, this session also showed how a human rights-based approach can help avoid such pitfalls.

About the Geneva Toxic Free Talks

The Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights reports every fall to the Council and to the UN General Assembly on issues related to his mandate. The Geneva Toxic Free Talks aim to harness the opportunity of this moment of the year to reflect on the challenges posed by the production, use, and dissemination of toxics and on how Geneva contributes to bringing together the actors working in reversing the toxic tide.

On the sidelines of HRC54, this year’s Toxic Free Talks will take place from 20 to 22 September — three days of conferences and discussions, highlighting the work of the Special Rapporteur and of organizations in the struggle for the right to live in a toxic-free environment.

Speakers

Marcos ORELLANA

UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights

Jerzy JENDROSKA

Vice Chair of the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee | Professor of European Law at Opole University (Poland) and of Environmental Law at Riga Graduate School of Law (Latvia)

Yuyun ISMAWATI

Senior Advisor and Co-Founder, Nexus for Health, Environment and Development Foundation (Nexus3) | IPEN Steering Committee Member

Clemente BAUTISTA

International Network Officer, Kalikasan People's Network for the Environment & Asia Pacific Network of Environment Defenders

Lisa TOSTADO

Agrochemicals and Fossil Fuels Campaigner, Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL)

Yves LADOR

Representative of Earthjustice to the United Nations in Geneva | Moderator

Summary

Welcome

Marcos ORELLANA | UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights

Greenwashing is one of the topics addressed in my Right to Science in the context of toxic substances report (A/HRC/48/61). In that context, disinformation is described as a tool often used to deliberately obfuscate public opinion, confuse society or divert intention from the necessary regulatory movement that would be based on best available evidence. In subsequent reports, these issues were addressed and talked about as false or misleading solutions.

When it comes to plastics or plastic pollution for example, issues of incineration and the generation of unintended persistent organic pollutants (POPs) or issues of recycling, we call that a mirage that again diverts attention because current technologies are unable to recycle plastics in a way that that has been touted by the plastics industry. Again, in the case of carbon capture advocated as a climate solution, we still face risks associated with the leakage of carbon. The same goes for nuclear energy, as the nuclear industry positions itself as the solution to the climate emergency because it is an energy source free of pre-owned gases but that does not take into account the impacts of uranium mining, especially on indigenous peoples that for decades have endured the adverse impacts of such mining or on workers; it does not take into account the huge challenges of managing the disposal of radioactive wastes

These issues have come up not only during thematic discussions or reports of country visits, there are lawsuits claiming some of the activists’ shareholders pointing out these practices.  So, there is a lot that needs to be unpacked: yesterday we spoke about the importance of consumer protection laws and of investor disclosures and  there are international instruments out there in regards to environmental assessment that are also particularly important in dealing with this information and greenwashing.

Coming Soon

The Aarhus Convention and the Right of Access to Information

Jerzy JENDROSKA | Vice Chair of the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee | Professor of European Law at Opole University (Poland) and of Environmental Law at Riga Graduate School of Law (Latvia)

• Neither the Aarhus Convention nor the Escazu Agreement regulates how to do environmental assessments. They are just focused on how to use it for the public benefit, how to make it transparent, and how the public can participate and challenge in environmental assessments.
• Until now, the only instrument that regulates environmental assessments is the almost as the Espoo Convention, which is a similar international tribunal that oversees compliance with the environmental impact assessment in a transboundary context.
• So, my talk will be about how to use this instrument for the purpose of procedural environmental rights for the public. The discussion will be an overview of what the scope of the concept is, on environmental assessments then about its role in decision making and a couple of words about advantages and issues of concern and then something about the decision-making procedures which are not covered by formal assessment procedures which create problems.
• The concept of environmental assessment was invented in the United States as a preventive tool related to planned activities that may have a significant impact on the environment. Nowaday, environmental assessments exist in all countries, however, three models exist

1. US model: a process that covers all major federal actions significantly affecting the environment. This is a formal process with public involvement, but it is very costly.
2. European model: There are separate assessments as environmental impact assessment for projects, strategic environmental assessment for strategic documents plans programs, and  a separate biodiversity assessment which we call “habitat assessment”. Then a separate “water assessment” and a special type of integrated pollution prevention and control assessment for the purpose of the procedures regulated in Europe.
3. Developing countries model: invented by the former Soviet Union for the centrally planned economy. The biggest disadvantage of this model is that the environmental assessment is not a public process because it is conducted by the developer project proponents, leading to many problems for getting properly diffuse of the public.

• The role of this formal assessment is the collection of all information about possible impacts of the proposed activity on the environment human health, social issues, and more. An aspect that has always been relevant in the USA model is the consideration of different alternatives for achieving the goal.
• The ultimate aim is the integration of environmental concerns with economic, social and other concerns related to proposed activity to avoid irreversible effects.
• The biggest advantage is that this is a public procedure. Developing countries are increasingly trying to adopt the European model system there is a transparent procedure as the US option is too costly and the European model is the most cost-effective. Fostering transparency, it allows the public to have a view and as at the Aarhus Convention, any comments could be submitted and public authorities must take due account of the comments.
• The means to help the public understand, the so-called non-technical summary, aims to give the public and decision-makers an informed idea of what the purpose of activities is. This process provides arguments for possible future litigation where the public would challenge a decision to allow certain projects to make conditions.

Issues of concern :

• For public legislation, the public has a very short timeframe to inspect files, which are usually quite long and technical.
• Inadequate screening and scoping. There is no special procedure to find out which concrete activities require full assessment because not everything does. Another issue is that once there is a full assessment, then there needs to be an individual scoping in which each and every activity is individual and public participation defining what impacts should be taken into account and studied within the length and the cost of the project proposed. Tendencies to limit this scoping are frequent as it is not a necessity and there is no involvement of the public.
• Quality assessment reports. Reports are often done by consultants on behalf of proponents, but the problem is that there are a lot of corrupt practices like plagiarism. For some studies, there is a lack of methodology and issues on how to assess our impact on the climate adaptation and mitigation of proposed activities. Another issues is deliberate inaccuracies, were the project proponent ask to not include certain information and pressure consultants not to reveal all the issues. There are some ways to avoid it, as quality control systems.
• Attempts to limit accessibility by different ways in some countries, you would have that public has access only to the non-technical summer which is absolutely not in line with the Aarhus convention. But, there are legal solutions like this, otherwise, they would have access to the documentation far away from the place where you live.  So, there are many ways of limiting public accessibility/
• With all these lagunas, gaps and issues, environmental assessment is the most powerful tool for the public to excert control of activities.
• On the other hand, product control procedures are not covered as they are not public, and not part of the assessment procedures that are publicly available. They are within the administration of the member states or the EU Administration, but still it is not publicly available. These are potentially very powerful tools that should be formalized in the public assessment procedures.

Marcos Orellana: Environmental assessments are project-specific, what is your view about the possibility of moving towards a sector approach? Would there be tools to do that at either country or regional levels? That could provide findings that could be relevant for all kinds of public involvement in ESG disinformation.

Jerzy Jandroska: Around 30 years ago the USA introduced some limits for a standard environmental impact assessment, setting it around 150 pages length plus annexes.  Qualified NGOs usually have experts who could get into this amount of information and make use of it.  That is what is happening but lacking time is an issue. We had recently a case from Germany of an amendment to the Climate Act and the NGOs had a possibility to comment for it for one day you imagine.

The procedure should be similar because otherwise, you do not have a level playing field, the interest is to not have a different approach. On the other hand, you have a lot of guidelines on how to do it in practice: what needs to be monitored, what needs to be envisaged, and what needs to be looked at and examined before activity for different types of industry. In this sense, there is the sectoral approach but otherwise, some basic features of the procedure must be the same for all types of activities, even the new ones. Transparency and public involvement are among these major features.

Against Greenwashing: Identifying and Addressing False Solutions to the Triple Planetary Crisis

Yuyun ISMAWATI | Senior Advisor and Co-Founder, Nexus for Health, Environment and Development Foundation (Nexus3) | IPEN Steering Committee Member 

• An increasingly relevant problem that we have seen all over the world due to the increased production of plastics is the increased production of chemicals, leading to more problematic plastics that cannot be degraded naturally or recycled properly.
• Various false solutions are offered to this issue, including small incinerators that can be found for cheap, which all have in common the aim to solve the problem at source but end up creating another problem.
• Another false solution that we are hearing is the co-processing of residuals of plastics into Refused-derived fuel (RDF) in cement kilns as well as in coal fire power plants. During last week’s dioxin conference in Maastricht, scientists presented their monitoring of the dioxins from incinerators all over have seen the decreasing concentrations of dioxins from incinerators in ambient air, but they are concerned now because of the climate net-zero approach. They are allowed to use or replace coal with RDF and so on, and that might increase other pollutants including the PFAs in the ambient air.
• RDF and SRF have been used or traded since 1990s, but there are more complicated issues now: RDF at the moment are mostly the residuals of plastics that cannot be recycled or low-grade value of plastics, and these have been traded mainly from developed countries to developing countries.
• We have seen countries changing policies Australia that have already adopted the commitment last year, that they would not export RDF but this year they changed their mind, so they are going to export what they call it “process engineered fuel”. There are lot of new jargon that have been introduced.
•  RDF variates in qualities and compositions, with seven types of grades. Most of them contain plastic residuals which cannot be recycled and that adds to their calorific value, making them suitable for kilns. However, the plants or power plants or cement kiln is fine because cement kiln have high temperature and all kind of waste will disappear or be co-processed into cement powder. However,  one study shows that even when cement kilns have high temperatures when they process hazardous solid waste, into co-processing hazardous solid waste would release dioxins three times or double the previous ones if they do not mix it with hazardous waste. Cement kilns also release more heavy metals after they mix it with RDF it increases.

• UNEP Chemicals in Plastics Report highlights there are unknown plastic additives that have been regulated globally. Many studies actually look at only single chemicals but not at the cocktails of chemicals effect when these burn in one place. The same study also shows the pathways of exposure to humans from the production, use, and end of life.
• Recent studies also advise on the risk of harmful chemicals in the shape of dust coming from used electronics which over a period of time will be degraded and released to the environment.
• From production to the end-of-life stages, if we introduce the wrong solutions or greenwashing with all kinds of technologies, this will be detrimental for countries who lack monitoring capacities.
• Within the IPEN network, we found the easiest way to monitor POPs in the environment is through chicken eggs because it is not invasive. The harmful chemicals also enter into our food chain.
• There are long-term effects to all these so-called green technology interventions. As the level of dioxins in eggs shows we reached levels that are probably higher than the Agent Orange Village after the Vietnam War. That is concerning because we were not in a war and not intentionally spreading out Agent Orange but dioxins are everywhere. These will lead to hormone disruption effects and more health hazards. There are more potential transmissions of these chemicals from soil to the food chain and to grazing animals.
• We would like to see more genuine solutions, the same amount of money that goes into false ones can be put into promoting zero waste, improving landfills, and improving promotions of segregation of waste from sources.
• Intergenerational justice has to be included or considered as a point in any policy-making because our children and our grandchildren are now going to face a problem when they grow up in the next five to ten years and it is not fair.
• Capacity building, especially for laboratory analysis and expertise are needed especially in developing countries because this will lead to the improvement of standards.
• Increased precautions and prevention are needed. The environmental impact assessment is one of the tools that can be used to prevent and give time to comment that will be more meaningful, we have seen also the evolution of the plastic waste trade, SPF process engineered fuel or RDF, that will open up another Pandora’s Box.
• We would like to remind policymakers also to keep their promise a lot of international conventions already agreed upon and signed, but lobbying is being effective in distracting their commitment.

Clemente BAUTISTA | International Network Officer, Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment & Asia Pacific Network of Environment Defenders

• The conditions of environmental defenders that try to reclaim lands subjected to land grabbing that will force them to lose their livelihood often have to fight against false claims that projects will bear no significant effects or impacts to the environment.  and this is socially accepted by the community. Projects of this nature greenwash with promises of economic development benefiting local communities and the mediation of climate change impacts such as sea level rise and storm surge protection.
• However, in reality, reclamation projects occurring in Manila Bay have displaced communities, violated the rights of people, exacerbated flooding in adjacent areas, deforested hundreds of hectares of mangroves, and destroyed marine ecosystems. This project will definitely make the coastal communities vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.
• Greenwashing can also be perceived at the political level, where promises to meet carbon emission commitments and preserve and restore natural resources have not been met, while prioritization of large-scale mining, importation of liquefied natural gas, the introduction of nuclear power, and construction of coal power plants and mega dams are marketed as solution to climate change.
• The extraction and production of minerals such as chromite, nickel, and copper head have increased. These minerals are marketed as essential for climate-friendly products like electric batteries and solar panels, but such projects have resulted in land grabs from indigenous people’s territories, agricultural land and communities of peasants deforestation, and contamination of our rivers, sea, and civil human rights violation including killings, abduction, legal harassment, illegal detention, militarization of communities,
• Between 2001 and 2022, at least 334 environmental defenders had been killed in the Philippines, with 165 related to mining and 106 related to agriculture or defense of land.
• Many organizations like have fallen victim to these human rights violations. It is clear that greenwashing is used to conceal their environmentally disruptive and anti-people projects.
• The United Nations and various bodies and mechanisms have been part of our advocacy to oppose this project and defend the rights of the people and community to save a clean healthy and sustainable environment. As a member of the Philippine Universal periodic review watch, we have a delegation at the UN Human Rights Council and its special procedures. Its mandate is to monitor and investigate the environmental destruction and the human rights situation in the Philippines.
• We support the proposal to establish more guidelines on managing and monitoring talks about the release of toxic waste and these are those ways dangerous to the environment.

Lisa TOSTADO | Agrochemicals and Fossil Fuels Campaigner, Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL)

• When we deal with greenwashing, it is important to speak about chemicals, more specifically fossil fertilizers. Today half of the fertilizers we use are based on fossil fuels which react with nitrogen from the air, which makes ammonia. The other two fertilizers most commonly used fertilizers are based on potash and phosphorus. They are mined and come with their own human rights impacts but they are not fossil-based.
• There are proposals for a decarbonization solution for the fossil fertilizer industry. This alleged solution is blue ammonia. Public money is being spent on this while the public is unaware of its effect.
• To produce ammonia, which is the basis for nitrogen fertilizers, we need hydrogen, the H2 molecule. That production today is almost exclusively based on fossil fuels, mostly gas methane gas but also coal, mostly in Asian countries.  All along the supply chain from the drilling, and extraction to transporting to use them as feedstock or as energy, these chemicals have socio-environmental impacts.
• Nitrogen is taken out of the air to make it reac with the hydrogen to make ‘blue ammonia’. Ever since the 1970s we have transgressed the safe planetary boundary for nitrogen so as humanity we have taken out too much unreactive nitrogen from the atmosphere and we created reactive nitrogen molecules that run off into soils and waters, they can contaminate drinking water and have a whole series of environmental and social consequences such as algae blooms and fish population diminishing.
• Today, the fertilizer industry is an under-recognized driver of the climate crisis and overall emissions. If we look at all the supply chain emissions from the fossil gas or the coal used to produce the hydrogen and then the very energy-intensive process to create ammonia and then the emissions that arise once you apply fertilizers onto the fields such as nitrous oxide emissions, emissions exceed those of commercial aviation.
• The fertilizer industry says that we do not have to make absolute reductions in fertilizer use, the solution is to capture the CO2 emissions in that process, making decarbonized hydrogen.
• ‘Blue ammonia’ is also discussed as a potential future shipping fuel, so the fossil fertilizer industry in the fossil and the industry are working together to make the so-called clean shipping fuel for the future or clean agrochemicals.
• Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is not a climate solution, it does not mitigate emissions and creates new problems. When we have the methane gas there is steam reforming happening with other fossil fuels, for the energy that is needed to break off the hydrogen molecules and then we have gray hydrogen and then if we add capture carbon capture technology to it. We call it blue hydrogen or blue ammonia, if we react the done with nitrogen green hydrogen would be based on water and then we have a lot of renewable energy to run an electrolyzer and then we could produce green hydrogen. So, that in theory would indeed have very low emissions, however, the reality today is that we are extremely far away from having any significant volumes of green hydrogen on the market, and a lot of industries bet on that.
• As an alleged bridge to a greener future there are a lot of investments going into the blue version of hydrogen despite almost 100% of it is based on fossils and a very small fraction is based on fossils with CCS.
• ‘Blue ammonia’ is based on fossil-derived hydrogen with CCS but carbon capture and storage is not new: it is an old technology that was deployed many years ago to actually be used it for enhanced oil recovery, so today 80% of the CO2 that is captured in various industrial plants is actually used to inject it into oil wells to get even the last bits of oil out of there so it has not led to any significant emission reductions. It is not effective, it has a very long history of over-promising and under-delivering capture rates.
• It is not economical nor safe because additional chemicals are needed for the capturing process. and it puts frontline communities that are already impacted by all these fossil fuels at further risk, which can be CO2 pipeline ruptures with a very dire consequences on human health and respiratory diseases.  It is not green because it requires more energy to run this carbon capture equipment.
• CCS has not proven to actually work and it creates new risks, citating from the report of Marcos Orellana “the inseparable link between CCS and the use of fossil fuels underlines the risks posed by this technology to Human Rights and it actually locks in place fossil fuel reliance also in the agricultural sector, on fossil fertilizers and the associated environmental injustices”.

  Green ammonia

• It is not a decarbonization or a detoxification strategy for the agrochemical sector either. Green hydrogen uses a lot of land and  fresh water leading to potential and grabbing issues.
• They make up more than 60% of the overall emissions and it does not address the overuse of nitrogen fertilizers.
• For the shipping industry ammonia is extremely toxic, so if we use it as cargo and as fuel very likely there will be spills and it would be more dangerous to fish than oil, so spills would be catastrophic. The combustion also releases large amounts of NOx emissions that is flammable.
• What we actually need is a transition away from the input-based industrial farming model that we have created and not just change the production process and at best capture a tiny little fraction.

Closing

Marcos ORELLANA | UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights

• One of the points that comes across very clearly is that there is a big debate as to the framing of things. While we face issues of greenwashing, we might find ourselves facing blue washing as well soon.
• If we lose the framing from the beginning and these information reach the public opinion, it is very hard to reverse that.
• On specific projects, the issues of greenwashing are not just about the global debates and narratives on plastics, or CCS as an abatement technology, they are also at the very local level where local communities, and indigenous peoples are suffering impacts from projects and so, what are the tools to deal with this information at that level? It is very important to remind these are not just academic or conceptual debates, they live at stake of the criminalization, persecution, harassment, the murder of environmental activists, and environmental and human rights defenders.
• It must be pointed out how what can be seen as complex chemical formulas at the end of the day comes again down to the right to live in a toxic-free environment and the kinds of disinformation strategies that are being put forward by the chemical industry in various ways.
• We must talk about development policy in the country: there are ranges of levels where this is happening and we need to look at the tools available like environmental assessments, investor disclosure, rules. Recently, the USA regulator of the stock market has brought legal action against Vale for misrepresentations on the safety of its dams after the Mariana San Marco Dam ruptures in Brazil. We need to see much more of that but in order to do that we need clearer standards upon which courts  may be able to take these cases forward.
• Dinformation undermines democratic governance and it undermines our ability to enjoy a healthy environment.

Highlights

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Links

• Environment @ 54th Session of the UN Human Rights Council
• Geneva Toxic Free Talks