Philippines: Trade pact with Japan 'Will turn country into a toxic waste dumpsite'
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Manila, 10 Nov. (AKI) - Japan will repeat its World War II occupation of the Philippines once again if the Senate ratifies the recently signed economic partnership agreement between the two countries, a lawmaker told AdnKronos International (AKI). Bukidnon Rep. Nereus Acosta, principal author of Clean Air Act and former chair of the House committee on ecology, claimed that the implementation of the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) will make the Philippines the dumping site of Japanese toxic and hazardous wastes.
"If we have already been over our history colonized by Spain, America, Japan, why as an independent sovereign nation and people do we allow ourselves to be made a dumping ground of hazardous and toxic wastes?" Acosta asked.
"That becomes literally a more permanent occupation because the wastes of a more developed and richer country will be literally buried or embedded in our soil," he stressed, adding that these wastes could cause harm to the country's waters, aquifers, air, health and to ecosystems.
Lawyer Ma Tanya Karina Lat of the Initiatives for Dialogue and Empowerment through Alternative Legal Services, cited that Article 29 of the JPEPA's Basic Agreement provides for the entry of Japan's wastes to the Philippines.
These wastes among others include: ash residues from the incineration of municipal waste, waste pharmaceuticals, residual products of the chemical or allied industries, municipal waste, sewage sludge and clinical waste.
"If Japan is really sincere in trading with us, they will regard us as partners and not slaves," Lat told AKI.
Japan is the biggest source of Philippines' overseas development assistance (ODA) amounting to 4.8 billion dollars as of first half of this year.
The Philippines' Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the lead agency that negotiated the JPEPA, admitted that the agreement permits the entry of scrap and recyclable materials from Japan. But Pascual de Guzman, DTI Legal Department director, said that the country's laws and the Basel Convention prohibit the entry of toxic and hazardous wastes in the country.
"Highly toxic substances are prevented from entering under our law. With or without the JPEPA if there will be an attempt to dump them [toxic and hazardous waste] here, they [the exporters] will dump it here illegally, via smuggling it," he told AKI.
The Embassy of Japan in Manila earlier issued a statement saying that Tokyo has been enforcing strict export and import control, which does not allow any export of toxic and hazardous wastes to another country, including the Philippines, "unless the government of such a country approves such export."
Mimi Sison of Green Initiatives Inc. expressed optimism that they will get at least nine votes from the 23 senators to junk the accord.
"We believe we can get even more than nine votes because the issue speaks for itself. The senators are honourable," she told AKI.
At least two-thirds vote of the Senate are needed to ratify the JPEPA.
The Office of president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is yet to transmit the agreement to the Upper Chamber for ratification.
The accord, which was signed by Arroyo and former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Helsinki, Finland on September 9, can only be implemented after the Senate's ratification.
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