The real bloodsuckers
by: Kendra Okonski & Niger Innis
Wall Street Journal Europe
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111644800426237250,00.html  DDT is often considered to be a relic of our industrial past -- but it also happens to be very effective at preventing malaria-carrying mosquitoes from transmitting the disease to humans. Although often eclipsed in the public eye by news about HIV/AIDS, malaria kills one million children and women each year and contributes indirectly to many more deaths. It also takes an often overlooked toll by incapacitating, for weeks every year, hundreds of millions of otherwise productive people.
A few months ago, though, EU representatives casually suggested to Ugandan ministers that if Uganda chooses to use DDT for malaria control, exporters will have to procure expensive equipment to ensure that their products do not contain any amount of residual DDT; otherwise they will face sanctions against their agricultural products. This negotiating technique is also known as blackmail.
Given the chemical's success at reducing the incidence of malaria in southern African nations, it is only natural that Uganda and other African countries are also considering using the chemical to battle one of their biggest human and economic scourges. "DDT has been proven, over an over again, to be the most effective and least expensive method of fighting malaria," said Ugandan health minister Jim Muhwezi. "Europe and America became malaria-free because of using DDT, and now we too intend to get rid of malaria by using it."
But thanks to the EU's not-so-subtle threats, many Ugandans have now second thoughts whether they can afford to save their people from dying. The country's $32 billion in annual agricultural exports to the EU are at risk.
As a result of this arm-twisting, two of Uganda's trade associations concluded that DDT ought not be used to control malaria. Producers of flowers -- 99% of which are not consumed -- contended that residual DDT would scare their consumers in foreign markets.
Uganda's coffee exporters followed suit. Paradoxically, coffee is a substance which contains hundreds of untested chemicals, many of which would probably be carcinogenic if consumed on their own in large doses. But (so far) no caffeine-deprived European bureaucrat has suggested that coffee production and consumption should be subject to the same chemicals and environmental treaty that regulates the use of DDT.
Interestingly, such threats were never waged against South Africa, Zambia and India, which also use DDT to control malaria. These countries already made the decision far too long ago for a threat by the EU to be meaningful. No European consumer has complained about agricultural produce from these countries, nor have their exporters been de facto forced into procuring expensive monitoring equipment.
Why is the EU pressuring Uganda to make this morally repugnant trade-off? First, it believes that it is more legitimate, more democratic, when it panders to environmental organizations, which in turn believe they represent the public. The EU works hand-in-hand with these groups to negotiate global environmental treaties, such as the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), an environmental treaty which outlaws the use of 12 chemicals, including DDT, to suit their interests. An alliance of environment and "consumer" organizations has grand designs to regulate global trade, ostensibly the cause of all of our problems.
Through the use of biomonitoring schemes (in which a person's blood is tested to reveal -- shock! horror! -- tiny amounts of residual chemicals)and other agitation, Europe's environmental-consumer alliance alleges that human exposure to DDT (and numerous other chemicals) in any amount is harmful.
In Uganda, as in other countries, minimal amounts of DDT would be sprayed inside dwellings -- approximately one tablespoon of DDT is immersed in water, and sprayed on the walls. This program would be orchestrated by trained sprayers under intense government and international monitoring. The chemical would not be available in sufficient quantities to be used in any agricultural pursuit, nor would trace amounts of these chemicals find their way into flowers, coffee or other agricultural produce.
Luckily, at least some environmental groups seem to have abandoned their "zero-risk" approach. "If there's nothing else and it's going to save lives, we're all for it. Nobody's dogmatic about it," Greenpeace spokesperson Rick Hind said a few weeks ago, ahead of a meeting in Uruguay to negotiate the POPs treaty.
Meanwhile, ideological interests have intersected with economic interests. Both to protect European farmers and satisfy activist demands, the EU has threatened the use of trade sanctions to uphold its stringent environmental rules. This means that while the EU may import food from Uganda, it would simultaneously seek to export its overly precautionary regulations -- e.g., requiring a zero residual level of DDT in agricultural goods -- to the country.
Moreover, the POPs treaty is not unique in this regard. A number of global treaties have been negotiated -- including the Cartagena (Biosafety) Protocol, the Basel Convention and perhaps even the Kyoto Protocol -- with the implicit idea that countries that do not abide by the EU's precautionary regulations may face trade sanctions as an enforcement mechanism.
While such action is theoretically illegal according to World Trade Organization rules (to which both Uganda and the EU subscribe), there is currently little flesh on these bare bones of international jurisprudence. The WTO's Doha Round has much bigger issues to resolve at the moment, but the environment-trade conflict is likely to rear its ugly head in the future.
Of course, the arguments used to justify protectionist measures on environmental grounds are flawed through and through. Consumers in Uganda's export markets are unlikely to be harmed at all by the country's decision to use DDT because it is extremely improbable that the quantities of DDT used for indoor spraying would enter the food chain or the environment. Moreover, trade inevitably helps people in poor countries by improving incomes and living standards, such that Ugandans might be able to eradicate malaria altogether.
The EU is free to claim that its regulatory standards are part and parcel of its citizens' progressive lifestyle. Applied to poor countries such as Uganda, though, these standards force unacceptable moral dilemmas.
Niger Innis is national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality & Kendra Okonski is director of the sustainable development programme at International Policy Network.
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