Greenversations

About the authors: Bob Dyer and Ella Barnes, Office of International Affairs, have managed work on the reduction of toxic and hazardous wastes in the Arctic under both the multilateral Arctic Contaminants Action Program (ACAP) and the Arctic Military Environmental Cooperation (AMEC) Program for over 10 years. Bob Dyer chaired the ACAP Working Group under the Arctic Council from 2004 to 2008, and Ella Barnes is the U.S. Representative to the ACAP Working Group.

If you stood with me at the northernmost point of the Chukotka Peninsula in Russia, on the shores of the frigid Arctic Ocean, what would we see? A star-filled sky, the Aurora Borealis, whales, walruses, perhaps a lost polar bear… But there is something that the eye cannot see: high concentrations of contaminants, from radioactive materials to pesticides.

A Chukotka family has set up residence in an abandoned hazardous waste tank.

The Arctic is fragile, and is an early warning indicator of the state of the larger planet. Almost all Russian rivers flow to the north, where contaminants accumulate in seaweed, fish, birds, and mammals. Through the subsistence food chain these contaminants quickly find their way into the bodies of indigenous people where they stay for years. Native Americans in the Arctic, who neither produced nor used these chemicals, are at risk.

Since 2004, EPA’s Bob Dyer has chaired and I have represented the U.S. at the Arctic Contaminants Action Program (ACAP), which includes the U.S., Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Russia. Working together with our partners, EPA is helping to greatly reduce environmental contamination in the Arctic.

ACAP, under EPA leadership, organized the effort which to date has resulted in inventory, analysis and safe storeage over 4,000 metric tons of obsolete and prohibited pesticides in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of Russia. Prior to this project, the contaminants were released directly into those northward-flowing Russian rivers and transported to the Arctic.

Thanks to the pesticides management program we initiated, Russian regions are now contributing their funds and manpower in development of creative solutions to pesticides storage. For example, they have converted an abandoned missile silo in Altai Krai, Southern Siberia, into an effective storage facility for legacy pesticides.

A Pokrovka former missile hangar was dismantled under the US Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. In 2007 it became an interim storage site for obsolete and prohibited pesticides under the ACAP Project.

Bob and I are particularly proud that, during the recent EPA chairmanship of ACAP, the program has created and implements a model environmental justice empowerment program in Russia called the Indigenous Peoples Community Action Initiative. This sustainable and replicable project has already resulted in the removal and safe storage of over a metric ton of PCBs and persistent organic pollutant pesticides from remote indigenous villages in Alaska and northern Russia.

A community elder in Chukotka, Russian Far East, told us that he lived with drums containing spent oils, lubricants, and transformer liquids all his life and they are a part of his landscape. EPA is helping to change that–this summer, through the ACAP Program, over 2000 drums were removed from two Arctic indigenous villages in Chukotka on the Bering Sea across from Alaska.

Residents of Lorino and Lavrentia, Chukotka Autonomous District removing hazardous waste drums.

About the author: Jacob Moss joined EPA’s air program in 1999 and has led a variety of air quality, energy, and international efforts since that time.

During my Peace Corps service in Togo, West Africa, in the late 1980s, I would often chat with local women while they cooked in their kitchens. These visits couldn’t last more than a short while simply because the smoke from the stoves was so dense I would start coughing, my eyes would sting, and I would have to go outside to breathe. These women, like nearly half the world’s population, cooked on rudimentary stoves using solid fuels. They typically used wood or charcoal, but in other regions of the world crop residues, coal and dung cakes are also used extensively.

In 2002, the World Health Organization ranked indoor smoke from cooking stoves as the 4th worst health risk factor in poor developing countries – after undernourishment, unsafe sex, and lack of clean water supply and sanitation. Breathing elevated levels of indoor smoke from home cooking and heating practices more than doubles a child’s risk of serious respiratory infection; it may also be associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes such as stillbirth and low birth weight.

In 2002, I helped EPA start an initiative called the Partnership for Clean Indoor Air (PCIA), to help galvanize global efforts to address these risks. Since its foundation, we’ve grown from 13 initial partners to more than 190 partners today. In India alone we have over 20 partner organizations from the government, NGO, academic and private sectors. Similarly, in the East African region (Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda), we work with over a dozen partnering organizations. EPA’s projects will bring cleaner cooking practices to over a million people, while our partners collectively plan on reaching about 30 million people in the next couple of years. We’ve worked with partners to ensure that the clean stoves and fuels being promoted are measurably and significantly reducing people’s exposure to this smoke.

Now I’m leading a process to expand PCIA to make it independent, sustainable, and capable of achieving large-scale results. In the next five years, we’d like to work with partners to demonstrate the ability to reach 50 to 75 million people who are currently exposed to poor indoor air quality. In the longer-term (say, 15 years), we’d like to work with our partners to design and implement a strategy to eliminate these risks for half of the affected global population – about 1.5 billion people.

I am happy to discuss some of our lessons learned from the field in future blogs. In the meantime, let me know what you think. How do you think we can most successfully expand PCIA?

Each week we ask a question related to the environment. Please let us know your thoughts as comments. Feel free to respond to earlier comments or post new ideas. Previous questions.

Got wheels? There are as many reasons you have a car, truck, or whatever you drive, as there are types of vehicles from which to choose. But there are also trade-offs in your vehicle choice that affect the environment and your wallet.

What do you drive, and why?

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En español: Cada semana hacemos una pregunta relacionada al medio ambiente. Por favor comparta con nosotros sus pensamientos y comentarios. Siéntase en libertad de responder a comentarios anteriores o plantear nuevas ideas. Preguntas previas.

¿Tienes ruedas? Hay muchas razones para escoger su medio de transporte, sea un automóvil, un camión, o lo que usted decida conducir, así como hay una gran variedad de vehículos que puede escoger. Asimismo, se hacen trueques al seleccionar su vehículo que afectan el medio ambiente y su bolsillo.

¿Qué tipo de vehículo conduce y por qué?