Heinous collusion of a troika to protect the polluters in poor countries

Rulers of poor countries are brutally smart.

Also, they are not naive about the harsh realities of this world.

They very well know how to protect their environment but they don’t want to do this.

They can’t afford to swallow the fury of giant industrialists, big corporations, rogue mafias of pollution and above all the vested interests that just want to earn more and more by spending peanuts.

Big polluters are not huge in number but they are so powerful that no government in any poor country can even talk against them.

They can topple the government with their powerful kicks and kickbacks.

They just want the cosmetic type of environmental activities –like fairy tales - which should keep going in poor countries to dupe all; you, me and the rest of the enlightened lot of this world.

Informal but most deadly coalition

They all are not in one forum, in a club or in a league to jointly pollute the environment of poor countries. They are dispersed in all poor countries of Asia, Africa and other poor regions of the world. Their vested interests are the same that’s why there is nothing uncommon in them. They adopt the same tactics to crush every attempt that means to protect the environment.

They know that if a green effort is made, it will be a direct hit on their financial, political and social interests. They have to install a treatment plant in their factory and pay the extra cost.


Or they have to stop selling adulterated fuel and it will be a big cut in their earning. Or they have to dispose of infectious waste of their hospital and pay the extra cost of incineration.

In short, for every effort to control pollution they have to pay its price. That’s why they don’t want any kind of serious effort for the protection of the environment in poor countries where they are very powerful. As a result environmental care has become a nasty joke there.

Heinous Coalition of Rulers, Regulators, and Polluters

Rulers, regulators, and polluters are dancing naked to hit the environment and no one can dare to stop them.

Its outcomes are more than several. Its outcomes are more than lethal. Some of them are as under.

Poor eat vehicular emissions

There is no exact data about the number of vehicles in poor countries.

Obviously, it should not be because of the absence of any proper data management system there.

So it is difficult to tell you how many vehicles emit smoke and noise more than the allowable limits.

If we believe in rough estimates, hardly 20 percent vehicles in poor countries emit within national environmental quality standards while rest of the 80 percent violate most of the standards.

The 20 percent of vehicles that emit smoke and noise within limits is not divine products. They don’t do so because of their proper maintenance and care. They emit less because they are quite new and of top-level car brands. Their engine has all green options to ensure smoke and noise emissions from it within holy green limits.

Shameless adulterated fuel

The main reason for excessive vehicular emissions in most poor countries is not simply the lack of maintenance and proper care of vehicles.

Another big reason is the open and unabashed sale of adulterated oil in such countries. Such nasty fuel adds poisonous gases in vehicular emissions, far above the standards.

There is no strict system of checks and balances to control the sale of adulterated fuel. Those who sell such fuel are so powerful that no one can stop them. Even if any regulatory agency arrests any of them he gets acquitted by offering fake evidence and fully enjoys the faulty and obsolete prosecution system of poor countries.

Give bribe and get a fitness certificate

In almost all poor countries there is no need to keep your vehicle in proper condition to get a fitness certificate for it. This may be good news for those who love to use antique vehicles.

The authority which issues fitness certificate is plagued with corruption. So much so, that its staffers take the salary just as a formality. Just to show they need it. Just to show they make their living with their salary. Just to pretend to be honest.

A vehicle owner can easily get a fitness certificate by paying bribe from ten to a hundred dollars.

After that, he drives his vehicle on road emitting smoke and noise while damn caring any f*cking limits. No one is to check his vehicle. If he is caught for polluting the environment he can easily escape by showing the fitness certificate which he got after paying the bribe.

More interestingly the traffic cops who check smoke emitting vehicles on road are not heavenly beings. They are also equally and honestly corrupt. They let polluting vehicles go after receiving a few bucks as a bribe. This is happening in every poor country.

Green laws lick the interests of giant industrialists

Industries in poor countries operate as if they are doing a great favor to their country. They champion to be a big support to their economy. They want to be untouchable and free from levy of each law because they claim to be contributing to the growth of their economy.

Industrial development is rarely done in poor countries. That’s why whoever opens a new factory he is taken as a champion of patriotism and a great benefactor to his country. So how come someone asks industrialists to comply with environmental laws in their operations.

I won’t do otherwise I will quit

Most of the industries in poor countries look to the government to get treatment plant free of cost to treat their effluent before releasing it directly into any water body including river and sea.

Their governments are poorer and they don’t allocate funds for this purpose because that is not their damn job. So they don’t provide funds and industries brazenly release their toxic effluent directly into the river and sea. No one can control them. They have a lame excuse for lack of funds to comply with green laws.

Industries also save themselves from green laws by contending that the economy is weakening day by day and their business is also facing a slowdown. If they are forced to spend money to control pollution from their operation they will shift their industry to a neighboring country where the cost of production is not so high and they can afford to comply with the green laws of that country.

As a result, environmental regulators of poor countries don’t take strict action against polluting industries and all the time keep requesting them not to pollute, please not to pollute and that‘s all.

Spit on the face of the regulator

In some rare cases if an environmental regulator takes any bold step against a polluting industry even then the owner of that factory uses all his high contacts and stops the regulator to take any further action. The file of such polluting industry is then sent in the archive to remain under the thick layer of dust.

Secondly, most of the regulatory staff in poor countries are financially corrupt and shelve the case of environmental violation of industry on receipt of a handsome amount as a bribe.

Big kick on the ass of development

Development in poor countries is considered as a divine thing.

Those who install the development projects of whatever type they are treated great benefactor to their country. They are not strictly asked to submit an environmental impact assessment (EIA) report of their project before installing it.

Nor the owners of development projects have that much green sense that they themselves submit EIA of their project. As a result, they do development without taking care of the environment.

A few projects submit such report but that is because their financiers and donors want it otherwise they also don’t follow the rule of getting environmental clearance before starting a new project.

As a result, hardly 10 percent of projects in poor countries are environmentally cleared while the rest is done by harming the environment as much as they can and nobody can stop the great benefactors of the nation.

Most of the owners of the development projects instead of getting green clearance in its true sense simply pay the bribe to the environmental authority of their area and easily get such clearance without fulfilling its green requirements.

This is the most viable solution in poor countries to get things done. Are they lucky or unlucky; please don’t forget to give your comments at the end of this post. So keep staying with me.

Keep littering civic waste

Proper collection of entire civic waste is still a flight of fancy in poor countries.

Communities living below the poverty line have no problem with mismanagement of their civic waste. Lower and middle-class communities though raise objection on not collecting their civic waste but agencies working for this job are equally lethargic, inefficient and corrupt.

Most of these agencies are poorly staffed where hiring is made without any merit. Financial corruption and bad governance are also common in waste collection agencies in poor countries.

As a result, they don’t do their job properly and almost 60 percent civic waste in poor countries litter around while 40 percent is collected with a poorly managed system and mostly dumped in open areas.

Eventually, it is burnt to get rid of it. Its open burning also creates air pollution and people have to eat it by inhaling the smoke of poisonous gases.

Hospitals are over-smart

Most of the manpower in the medical sector is highly educated. Right

But at the time of following environmental laws, they become over-smartly innocent. They show their unawareness of how to safely dispose of infectious waste of hospitals and throw it like a civic waste.

In big cities of poor countries, a few incinerators work to cater to the infectious waste disposal need of hundreds and hundreds of hospitals and clinics. So most of the hospitals dispose of their waste like ordinary civic waste and easily avoid paying incineration fee.

Here again environmental regulators of these countries also keep silence over this violation on receiving bribe from hospitals or from those who collect the hospital waste and unsafely recycle most of the medical-related items from it without following any safety standards.

The recycling industry is a thing of art

In Pakistan, there is only one well-known setup of the recycling of solid waste. It is an NGO that champions to be an upholder of recycling. Most people take their activities related to art. They talk about it just to show they do have an artistic sense. Does it sound strange? But it is happening there in its literal sense.

In other poor countries, the situation is not much different. There is no concept of recycling of waste. It is treated as if it is an art to recycle a tin as a flower pot. They call it a luxurious activity. They presume a common man has nothing to do with it. As a result, most of the recyclable items - that are in millions of tons - are treated as solid waste and dumped into landfills and cannot be made reusable.

Secondly, there is no demand for recycling in poor countries. If any business invests it in it has to suffer losses. Despite being poor, people feel shame to use recycled items because of their cultural restrictions for not using throwaways.

On the other hand, the poorest people don’t know its benefits nor can they afford to buy recycled items. Hence in the near future, there is no prospect of success of recycling business in poor countries till people become fully aware of their benefits.

Meaningless awareness

Environmental awareness in poor countries is done in random ways. Government and non-governmental organizations, educational institutions and community groups do awareness activities at their own level but they do very randomly.

Whenever they have budget, opportunity, reason or time to conduct an awareness activity they do it. In their activities, more focus is given on fun and entertainment.

On another extreme, they make quite boring activities of lengthy seminars and bookish workshops without deciding what they have to disseminate for which purpose.

More interestingly those who impart environmental awareness are either very technically qualified and can’t communicate the message of the environment in simpler terms or they are so shallow in the approach that their green sermons remain limited to tree planting and garbage collection. They don’t have knowledge of the community aspect of environmental care.

Regulators eat bribe, drink bribe and sleep bribe

At the pattern of advanced countries, the green regulators of poor countries are either called environmental protection agency or pollution control board. Whatever they are called but their function is the same.

They remain a slave to their political boss - environmental minister - and keep dancing to his tunes. If the political boss asks them to close eyes over any serious environmental violation they can’t afford to disobey him. If they do so they have to leave their job.

Hiring in green regulatory offices is made purely on a political basis. Merit in appointments is killed in daylight. Political affiliation becomes the divine criterion for hiring on every green job.

As a result, most of the green regulators in poor countries fail to protect the environment of their jurisdiction. How can they do this with a political lot of inefficient people as their staff members?

Secondly being government department salaries of their staff are very low and they also lack the professionalism to stay committed with their profession and easily compromise on rules if a polluter pays them money as a bribe. They happily shelve the case of his environmental violation without feeling any grudge of conscience.

They put their conscience in the deep freezer to never take it out again. Bribe may be in hundreds or thousands of dollars depending upon the level of the bribe-receiving staffer.

Legislators damn care environment

Legislators in poor countries have nothing to do with the environment.

No one of them wants to become an environment minister because in other departments there are higher chances of corruption and embezzlement. The environment sector is in the least priorities in every poor country so its regulatory department receives minimum funds. Hence its environment minister cannot enjoy that much perks and benefits as his colleagues can enjoy in other departments.

So a legislator with no or minimum political clout is made environment minister. Eventually, his main job is confined to extracting as much political and financial benefits from the environment sector as possible. He gives free hand to his subordinate bosses in the green regulatory department to mint as much money as possible for him and hire people from his party to please the workers of the party which he belongs to.

Political cronies are green bosses

In India, almost all the heads of the pollution control board (PCB) are appointed on a political basis. In each estate of India, the ruling party appoints its favorite as head of PCB.

For legislation, neither environment regulatory department has that much efficiency to make new and stringent laws to control pollution nor does any upper or lower House of legislatures have any interest to pass such laws. They are mostly interested in making laws that can make them popular and help win the next elections.

So legislatures prefer to do activities which create the impression that the government is doing a great job for the poor. As far as environmental care is concerned even the poor don’t want any environmental care and they just want two times bread and a house to live. They don’t want clean water they just want the water to quench their thirst.

 In most of these countries there is a dearth of drinking water, housing, sanitation, food, and jobs. So governments of poor countries remain busy combating this shortage and never think about environmental care.

Dumb media

Media give minimum coverage to environmental issues. To some extent, media is right in its stance with the argument that no one fondly reads their green stories. People in poor countries are least concerned with environmental issues. They have much more grave issues to combat and suffer from their effects. Hence no advertiser gives them ads for such pages that cover environmental stories.

In Pakistan, not a single reporter of any newspaper has the beat of the environment exclusively. Most reporters do work for this beat (subject) in addition to several hot-demand beats like crime, fashion, showbiz, politics, etc.

The situation in electronic media is also the same. Need not to say about green blogging because most of the people in poor countries don’t know what blogging is. So how come they know about green blogging.

Green NGOs are mostly dark brown

A few genuine NGOs work very honestly for the green cause in poor countries while the majority of them just work to mint money. They receive funds from foreign or local donors and spend less than half of the amount genuinely while the rest they use for huge salaries of their staff, for vehicles and administrative expenses.

Moreover, many green NGOs don’t hesitate to embezzle the funds because most of their projects work in far-flung areas and remain out of reach of donors who can’t keep vigil over them regularly. They hardly visit there once or twice.

As a result, such NGOs have a free hand to misuse the project money for their own benefits and sometimes it may be millions of dollars.

Green activists are impotent

In every poor country, there are a few hundred genuine and sincere green activists but they can’t be heard because of their weaker position.

In backward societies, they are not regarded as important persons and no one listens to what they say. They don’t have a huge following in communities because owing to fear factor communities mostly follow those who are rogues.

Owing to their lack of strong following government regulatory agencies don’t give them much importance nor can they pressurize legislators to make strong laws for green care. As a result, their activities remain limited to protests, demonstrations, condemnation of polluters and that’s all.

Green courts want evidence

The judicial sector of poor countries handles a huge number of cases related to issues other than the environment. As a result, courts don’t have time to think about the environment.

Secondly, their main job is to hear the cases that are brought in the court so they can’t be blamed for environmental disasters in poor countries.

Obviously, courts are bound to hear only those cases that are brought for prosecution and 99 percent of them are related to issues other than the environment. Even if a few cases of environmental violations are brought in the courts they also lack evidence and remain pending. As a result, people don’t pin high hopes on courts for the solution to their environmental problems.

End of the story; poor are dying

The inefficiency, corruption, mismanagement, malpractices, maladministration and bad governance in the environment sector of poor countries bring on all types of pollution. Each type of pollution has a huge negative impact on the environment and on the health of people both.

As a result water pollution makes them suffer from kidney cancer apart from several gastric and other diseases. Air pollution affects their respiratory system and may cause lethal diseases like cancer. Land pollution causes a myriad of endemic diseases like typhoid, pneumonia, malaria, etc. Noise pollution weakens their nervous system and may bring on deafness in them.

Pollution as a whole keep them pining in absolute poverty and never let them improve their standard of living. So the end result is that poor people die because of a deadly coalition of rulers, regulators, and polluters in poor countries.