Mag je de staat vertrouwen als die zegt dat een nieuwe vuilverbrandingsinstallatie geen gevaar voor de gezondheid oplevert? In Panyu, een voorstad van de zuid-Chinese metropool Guangzhou, leeft argwaan. En niet zonder reden. De overheid moet zich verantwoorden, iets waar Chinese autoriteiten nog niet erg bedreven in zijn, om het diplomatiek te zeggen. Ze haten het, de autoritaire baasjes. Maar dat krijg je met een opkomende middenklasse: die slikt niet meer zomaar alles wat de partij oplepelt en laat zich niet snel intimideren - zeker als het om dioxine in de eigen achtertuin gaat. Hieronder het verhaal uit de Chinese media, vertaald door de onvolprezen blog EastSouthWestNorth. The Press Conference About The Garbage Incinerator (11/09/2009) (Fu Jianfeng at My1510.cn) The garbage incinerator project in Panyu (Guangdong) is vigorously opposed by the several hundred thousand people who live in the area. It is easy to imagine why the opposition exists, because this location is upwind from Guangzhou city and it has at least 300,000 residents in a densely populated area including more than a dozen large housing estates within a radius of several kilometers. The sudden insertion of a garbage incinerator plant that processes 2,000 tonnes of garbage scares the residents who are worried about their personal safety. When the Panyu district drew up this plan, it should now that opposition was likely. This is reflected in the document in 2009. This notice was published on February 4, 2009 on the Guangzhou city government website and it used strong words: "All those who violate this notice, or refuse/obstruct state workers in carrying out their duties will be sent by the public security units to the relevant judiciary units for punishment in accordance with the laws and regulations; those who commit crimes will be pursued for their legal responsibilities." Afterwards, the Panyu district government admitted that the project has not yet passed any environmental assessment yet. How can a project which has not passed environmental assessment and therefore does not have a construction permit be issued with a stern warning of severe punishment for opponents? What is the legal basis for this notice? Fortunately, the Panyu government has not resorted to invoking this notice at a time when public opposition is so heated. Instead, they have chosen to use the most basic method of communication between a modern government and its people -- on October 30, a press conference was held to address the doubts about the garbage incinerator plant. Thus, it has made an enlightened turnabout on the handling of a public issue. But this type of exchange should be done responsibly and not be a ruse to deceive the public. Otherwise, they may be outsmarting themselves. There are many such examples in recent years. In the case of Tiger Zhou, the Shaanxi Provincial Department of Forestry invited four experts who proclaimed that the tiger that Zhou Zhenglong filmed was real. But that "paper tiger" would make the Shaanxi Provincial Department of Forestry become a laughing stock. In the case of the Shanghai "black taxi" entrapment, the government held a press conference to announce the results of an investigation which resulted in no evidence whatsoever of entrapment. Even the Shanghai city leaders condemned the show for "insulting the intelligence of the public." At this Panyu district press conference, certain details also unfortunately became the foci of public doubts. At this press conference, netizens strongly questioned the statements from Nie Yongfeng, who is a Tsinghua University professor and the director of the Ministry of Education's Solid Waste Disposal and Environmental Safety Laboratory. At the press conference, Nie Yongfeng said that the technological level of large-scale garbage incinerators in China has reached advanced international levels. Overseas garbage incinerator plants with better technology are built right inside residential areas. In Japan, garbage incinerator plants stand right next to elementary schools and kindergartens. But the truth is that garbage in China is not as sorted into as many types as they do in Japan, so that dioxin-producing plastic products are incinerated. Therefore, the article estimates that the amount of dioxin produced per tonne of incinerated garbage in China is 47 times that of Japan. Besides, the Liheng (Guangdong) garage incinerator plant now just beginning to operate may have adopted advanced international technology, but the residents found the foul smell unbearable. To quote international data out of context is possibly guilty of misleading the public and the government. Why did Nie Yongfeng supported the idea that incineration is safe in this manner? Netizens found one explanation: Nie is the patent holder to the "rotating gas incineration oven" under patent number 00258660.6 granted on October 20, 2000. This information can be located on the State Intellectual Property Rights Bureau website. How can an expert whose research results are used towards designing incinerators be expected to give a fair assessment of the dangers of garbage incineration? Besides, his invention makes it easy for the public to imagine that there is a business relationship between himself and the interest groups. When an expert is not neutral in terms of interest, how can the public trust his research and judgment? The other expert Shu Chengguang at the press conference drew even more attention. He said that garbage incinerator plants produce very little dioxin and are therefore not dangerous. He drew a truly astonishing analogy: "If we have to compare the amount of dioxin, then barbeques generate 1,000 ti9mes more dioxin than garbage incineration." As a result, Shu Chengguang has been dubbed "BBQ expert" by netizens. His assertion is quite inconsistent with science and data. The damage by garbage incineration to environment and health in Denmark and Japan is well known. In the case of Japan, CCTV reports that even though Japan has the most advanced garbage incineration technology of the world, the level of dioxin detected in the atmosphere is 10 times higher than other developed industrial nations during the 1990's. Since dioxin is a first-grade carcinogen, the cancer rates around garbage incinerators in Japan are higher. For this reason, Japan has decreased the number of garbage incinerator plants from 6,000+ to 1,800 today. How can an expert say something that blithely ignores the facts? Is this a simple case of divergence of academic opinions? Or is there an interest group motive behind? Shu Chengguang is a vice-president and chief technologist at the Convanta Energy Group (China Region). The Covanta Energy Group is the largest garbage incinerator investor/builder in the world. According to Securities Times, the Covanta Energy Group and the Guangzhou Holdings Company reached an agreement to set up the Guangzhou Development Covanta Environmental Energy Sources Limited Company which is engaged in the garbage incinerator business in the Pearl Delta. The initial capital was already 50 million yuan. As the spokesperson for an interest group, it would be amazing if Shu Chengguang did not say that kind of thing. The problem is that the government should be neutral in matters of administration and policy-making. They should be the spokesperson on behalf of the public interest instead of tilting towards some interest group. At this press conference, they permitted the spokesperson of an interest group to explain a public policy while giving him the aura as an expert. How can such a press conference and such an expert convince the people? Therefore, I think that if the government wants to use authoritative experts to communicate with the public, the experts should have no material interests in the matter in order to be credible. The government should not influence or define the judgment and speech of the experts. The public will only believe it when the experts made their judgment on the basis of objective study. Otherwise, people will think that this is "insulting the intelligence of the public." In the next round of environmental assessment over the garbage incinerator, we don't want to see this as being perfunctory and we don't want to see this as being swayed by interest groups. We hope that the environment assessment experts can be neutral in terms of their interest, that they will consider the public interest as well as urban development together, and that the process should be open and transparent. Only then can the environmental assessment be fair and convincing, and the public policy can have a legal basis.

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