More than 50,000 tons of poisonous pesticides lie virtually abandoned in various countries around Africa. Strewn around, unrecorded, stored in leaking containers near schoolyards, residential areas and farmland, these poisons represent a deadly legacy left behind in Africa by multinational chemical companies, often working in tandem with "development" agencies like the World Bank.

An initiative called the Africa Stockpiles Project (ASP) is working to remove and destroy these pesticides. But the World Bank's involvement in the project raises a new concern related to how the pesticides will be disposed. The concern arises from the Bank's continued support of dangerously polluting "disposal" methods like incinerators and cement kilns. For the Africa Stockpiles Project, the World Bank is the designated "lead agency.

African and international public interest groups say that there is a need to ensure that the Bank doesn't push for the burning of these wastes in incinerators or cement kilns. Incinerators and cement kilns contribute substantially to global pollution by producing deadly poisons such as dioxins and furans. According to a 2001 survey by Essential Action, at least 79 World Bank projects in 47 countries have involved incineration in recent years.

"It would indeed be ironic if the World Bank left Africa saddled with a new legacy of polluting incinerators and cement kilns set up to destroy an earlier legacy caused by pesticides dumped on Africa by aid and trade organizations," said Mauricio Sulila of Mozambique-based community group Livaningo. Dioxins and furans, the by-products of incinerators and cement kilns, are among the most toxic substances known to science. Some of them are known carcinogens, and are implicated in sabotaging body processes by interfering with vital systems such as the immune, hormonal and reproductive systems.

In 1999, Livaningo, supported by public interest groups from around the world, defeated a proposal by the Danish Government to burn Mozambique's pesticide stockpiles in a local cement kiln retrofitted with Danish technology. The Danish government recently announced that it will end the practice of burning hazardous wastes in cement kilns.

Pesticides stockpiles, including those found in Mozambique, are in large part a result of programs packaged as aid. Between 1988 and 1995, the World Bank financed the purchase of $250.75 million worth of pesticides, mostly from Western pesticide multinationals, on behalf of Southern nations, according to Pesticide Action Network North America's briefing paper titled "Poison Profits - The G7 Pesticide Industry's Stake in the World Bank."

For several years now, the Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK), part a global network of public-interest groups advocating reduced reliance on chemical pesticides, together with the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has sought to bring world attention to the problem of rotting pesticide stockpiles in Africa and other places in the industrializing world. Their efforts received a considerable boost with the recently signed Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in May 2001.

POPs are a category of life-threatening human-made chemicals which do not degrade in the environment and are linked to a variety of debilitating health conditions including cancers, immune system disorders and serious reproductive anomalies such as infertility, endometriosis and falling sperm counts. The Stockholm Convention currently targets 12 POP chemicals – nine of them pesticides such as DDT and Aldrin, and three toxic chemicals such as dioxins, furans and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) — which occur in emissions from incinerators, waste burners and other industries involving chlorine-based processes.

As part of the Convention's requirements to move towards a world without POPs, the international treaty mandates the identification, containment and eventual destruction of stockpiles of obsolete pesticides. Such stockpiles are currently spread out all over the industrializing world. It also calls upon rich countries to financially assist poorer nations to address their POPs problems.

Many of the toxic pesticides stockpiled in Africa are POPs. PAN-UK and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) floated the idea of the Africa Stockpiles Project, a comprehensive, continent-wide effort to contain, remove and destroy all of Africa's obsolete pesticides. In the eight months since the idea was first mooted in December 2001 in Johannesburg, South Africa, it has garnered support from a wide range of NGOs and intergovernmental organizations, including the FAO and the World Bank. The scope of the project, a ten-year effort costing upwards of $200 million, is commensurate with the magnitude of the problem.

The FAO is currently conducting an inventory of the stockpiles of pesticides accumulated in various Southern countries. So far, 25,000 tons of obsolete pesticides have been identified in Africa alone. Experience suggests that the actual size of the stockpiles will grow to several times this amount, after comprehensive estimates, including the quantum of contaminated soil and equipment, become available.

PAN-UK acknowledges that incineration has been the primary method of treating obsolete pesticides, but notes that the Africa Stockpiles Project offers the possibility of treating obsolete pesticides without the generation of deadly chemicals like dioxins and furans. Several recently introduced non-combustion technologies hold the potential of destroying chlorinated wastes without the generation of POPs emissions. In fact, some of these technologies may be tried out to destroy PCB wastes in the Philip-