CORPORATIONS PROFIT: TAXPAYERS PAY

In 1995, Greenpeace estimated that during the ten years following the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole, the global chemical industry made estimated sales of ozone depleting substances of three billion US dollars each year. This amounts to nearly $30 billion dollars worth of ODS sales between 1986 and 1995. To this day, the industry profits handsomely from the continued sales of CFCs in both industrialized and developing countries; from the global sales of environmentally intolerable CFC substitutes, such as HCFCs and HFCs; and from the sale of other potent ozone depleting substances, such as the pesticide and fumigant, methyl bromide.

In a precedent setting agreement in 1990, the Parties to the Montreal Protocol established the Multilateral Fund to assist Article 5 or developing countries phase-out the use of ozone depleting substances (ODSs). The Multilateral Fund embraces the very important "polluter pays principle"...but only partially so. To date, only the tax payers of Article 2 countries have contributed to the Fund. Meanwhile, the real polluters, the multinational chemical corporations who created the ozone crisis in the first place with their careless disregard of early warning signs, have yet to pay a penny to help repair the damage that their products have inflicted upon the ozone layer. They are quite content to let the tax payers clean up their mess.

Since 1991, the tax payers of industrialized countries have contributed over 650 million dollars to the Multilateral Fund of the Montreal Protocol. Paradoxically, substantial portions of this money has ended up in the coffers of the multinational chemical corporations that supply the CFC replacements to developing countries. As such, the Multilateral Fund is a vehicle for transferring public money into private hands. This sum, however, is pitifully insufficient to meet the challenge of phasing out all ozone depleting substances as soon as it is technologically feasible to do so.

If the chemical corporations were required to dedicate a percentage of their vast profits to support the Multilateral Fund, preferably in direct proportion to the profits they have earned over the years from the sale of ODSs, then the global phase-out of the use of all ozone depleting substances could be achieved at a radically accelerated pace.

Given the ominous indications that a significant number (perhaps a majority) of Article 5 countries will not be meeting the 1999 freeze target on CFC consumption, which could then result in a net increase in global ODS consumption (thus reversing the necessary trend), an accelerated phase-out regime of CFCs in developing countries is essential. Such a regime can only be facilitated through a profusion of funds into the Multilateral Fund. In 1995, the UNEP Technology and Economics Assessment Panel estimated that the Fund would need to be doubled in order to enable all Article 5 countries to phase-out CFCs by the year 2006. If the chemical industry would match the amount of money the tax payers are contributing to the Multilateral Fund, an accelerated CFC phase-out schedule in developing countries could be accomplished.