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By Chiu Yu-Tzu, Taipei Times

TAIPEI, Taiwan 24 July 2001 -- BAD AIR: Environmentalists are meeting in Taipei this week to coordinate efforts against the use of incinerators by governments too lazy to solve the waste problem

As the anti-globalization movement gathers steam worldwide, it is incorporating environmentalism into its general philosophy. This week, activists in Taiwan will discuss the experience they have gained in the fight against waste incinerators with their counterparts from overseas.

The event is called an "international anti-incinerator forum" and the activists hope to exchange ideas in an effort to concoct successful strategies against the building of incinerators.

The annual conference of Waste Not Asia (WNA), the first Asian trans-national environmental group to focus general opposition against waste incineration and landfills, is scheduled to be held from July 26 to 30 in Taipei.

Established last July, WNA is a cooperative venture of activists from several Asian countries, including India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Guam, Pakistan, Nepal, Thailand, Japan, China, South Korea and Taiwan.

In the past year, activists from other countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia joined the alliance. In those countries, the countryside has been used as a toxic waste depository by other dominating countries.

WNA is financially supported by the US-based Global Anti-Incinerator Alliance (GAIA), an international alliance of individuals, academ-ics, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and others working to end waste incineration. The Taipei forum will have at least 100 people attending from the US, Australia, and several Asian countries. "Most NGOs in the world are working on promoting anti-globalization. So a trend is starting of establishing global networks by themselves. We work hand-in-hand on diverse issues," Lai Wei-chieh , secretary-general of the Green Citizens' Action Alliance (GCAA), told the Taipei Times yesterday.

Taking recent anti-G8 demonstrations as an example, Lai said fighting together toward common targets made activists with diverse backgrounds and missions more united.

"The adroit manipulation of NGOs on environmental issues will soon become a concern. After all, the trans-national cooperation of NGOs could be as complicated as the diplomatic contact between governments," Lai said.

The GCAA this year helped the WNA to organize the annual conference with the Taiwan Watch Institute (TWI), a Taipei-based environmental group dedicated to fighting incinerator use. However, it is GAIA that will decide the agenda of the conference, including speakers and topics for discussion.

The main topics of the conference include the introduction of international environmental treaties, the estimation of the real cost of waste incinerators, the responsibility of manufacturers to recycle electronic products, the usage of left-overs as fertilizer, and urban waste management in other countries.

"Through this channel [the conference], environmentalists in developing countries can gather updated information already used in developed countries, and eventually come up with their own strategies based on the cultural or political situation in their countries," said George Cheng, TWI executive general.

Without essential information or successful strategies in other countries, Cheng said, local activists could hardly raise public awareness to fight poorly-designed environmental policies or any intolerable behavior by irresponsible industry proponents.

"The introduction of international treaties at the conference would alert the industry and the public," Cheng said.

At the conference, Jim Puckett, an anti-toxin activist of the Seattle-based Basel Action Network (BAN), will explain the Basel Convention on regulating cross-boundary shipment of toxic industrial waste, and the recently-signed Stockholm Treaty on Persistent Organic Pollutants.

BAN in 1999 successfully worked with local environmental groups in Taiwan to halt the shipment to the US of Formosa Plastic Group's mercury-contaminated waste, which was previously rejected by Cambodia in late 1998.

"Incorporating foreign experiences might help us to prevent similar environmental dangers," Cheng said.

As an example, the US-based Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition will soon start working with local groups in Taiwan against the export of electronic products from the US and European countries to Taiwan for further treatment.

Processing electronic products will increase the environmental burden due to the toxic waste water and hazardous waste produced by the process.