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04/19/2007
Piracy and Pollution
I did a lot of reading the past week as I had two 15-hour+ flights
from Newark to Hong Kong and back, so I thought I’d pass on a
few notes from selected pieces.
About three years ago I was in Singapore and during my stay
took a ferry to Indonesia to cross the strategic Strait of Malacca,
the body of water that bisects Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia
and through which much of the world’s oil and goods of all other
types passes. It’s quite a sight to be out in a small boat, surrounded
by supertankers.
But back in the days after 9/11, attention was focused on the
straits as a potential source of terrorist activity. At first the
United States offered visible assistance but in this often
politically charged area eventually Washington was advised by
the other three to tone it down and instead provide intelligence
on ship traffic. At the same time Singapore, Malaysia and
Indonesia banded together in a unified effort for wider air and
sea patrols as well as use of ID devices in cargo.
The result has been startling. In just two years, the incidents of
piracy or attempted piracy have declined from 46 in 2004 to 16
in ’06. And as officials in the region note, there is a difference
between the terms pirates and terrorists.
Ian Storey, a fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies,
says “pirates need international trade to continue and don’t seek
to draw attention to themselves; terrorists want to disrupt trade
and seek maximum publicity.”
Another analyst based in Singapore, Zara Raymond, said “There
has been absolutely no link between terrorists and pirates. No
evidence. Media hype was out of control, pressure from
Washington, and worries that terrorist threats to shipping drove
regional countries to step up measures against piracy.”
Wendell Minnick of Defense News wrote of “a recent U.S.
Government Accountability Office study that suggested an
explosion from a liquid natural gas (LNG) tanker could burn
people up to a mile away. Saying no LNG tanker has ever been
attacked by terrorists or suffered such a catastrophic accident,
Raymond called the report ‘speculation’ and part of a post-9/11
obsession in Washington to find the next threat.”
Sam Bateman, a senior fellow in the Maritime Security Program,
said “These include a ship carrying a dangerous cargo being
hijacked and used as a floating bomb to destroy a port, or a large
vessel being sunk to block a narrow chokepoint for shipping.
However, these are low-probability, high-consequence
scenarios.”
I fell prey to some of the theories myself, even as the terrorist
threat in the region can never be ignored, but some of the
scenarios, including sinking a ship to block the straits, are
virtually impossible. And as bad as a suicide attack by a small
boat or an attack on a cruise liner or passenger ferry would be,
petrochemical or large cargo ship traffic would be interrupted
only briefly. So, again, if the goal is to disrupt commerce,
terrorists are probably looking elsewhere.
I also have to note from my day in Fuzhou, China, last week that
I saw a ton of duck farms; a very visible reminder to me that bird
flu is an ever present threat, especially in its ability to shut down
commerce around the world if the H5N1 virus, or another we
have yet to learn about, mutates to allow human-to-human
transmission.
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In my travels to Asia the past few years, including this past
week, it’s clear that pollution is not only getting worse, it
threatens the tremendous growth story that has taken hold across
the continent. Then you have the water issue.
From a piece by Orville Schell in Newsweek, here are a few
startling facts.
Only 278 of China’s 661 major cities have sewage-treatment
plants.
70% of the rivers are polluted.
65% of China’s agriculture industry is in the North China Plain
where 250 million live and the water table is falling 10 feet a
year. The government has launched a $62.5 billion project to
move 50 billion cubic meters of water via three diversion
projects from the Yangtze River. It has also tried cloud seeding,
but with only modest success, and believe it or not some
municipalities are upset at the efforts because they feel they
move clouds away from their own towns and villages!
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You know those plastic grocery bags? Many of them are made
in China, produced by workers paid the equivalent of $125 a
month, who then churn out 25,000 bags every day. I read this
tidbit in the South China Morning Post, but in talking of Britain’s
use of the bags, it’s really a tale of how they are produced in
China, shipped to Britain and other European countries, and then
shipped back to China to be put in landfills because it is cheaper
to send the garbage back to China then place it in landfills in
Europe. [By the way, it costs about 8/10th of a penny to make
one and the United States alone requires 12 million barrels of oil
for the 100 billion bags its consumers use annually.]
Actually, environmental group Friends of the Earth says that in
the context of the scale of the environmental issues we face, in
Britain plastic bags account for only 0.3% of the domestic waste
stream and are far from its top priority.
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Next week: Another veritable potpourri of issues if you keep it
where it is.
Brian Trumbore
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