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Meet Blacksmith’s Global Team

Apr 29

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Blacksmiths global team

Blacksmith's global team

Blacksmith experts from around the world gathered  in New York in early April to discuss remediation work in their home countries, share ideas and plan future projects.

Among them are lecturers, doctors, engineers, researchers and other pollution and public health experts, who bring with them knowledge of the local community. Many have worked with the environment ministries of their countries, and some are founders of local and regional NGOs. Meet some of our global team below and find out what Blacksmith is doing from Kenya to Tajikistan.

Yaw Osei - Ghana

GHANA

Yaw Amoyaw-Osei is Blacksmith’s expert in Ghana, which houses one of the world’s most notorious e-waste dump sites – the Agbogbloshie recyclers market. Yaw previously worked with Ghana’s enviornmental agency conducting research on e-waste and helping to raise awareness about the problem. Phillip Raburu - Kenya

KENYA

“If villagers living in areas with high levels of toxic pollutants are poisoned and fall sick, they would always attribute it to witchcraft,” says Phillip Raburu.  ”This is because health facilities in Kenya never investigate toxins in the blood as a routine. Lack of positive diagnosis of known diseases is normally attributed to witchcraft.”  As a lecturer at the university teaching environmental issues and an active participant in community-based environmental activities, Raburu feels that experts should not speak from their ivory towers but instead, should connect with locals in their language to make impacts of toxic pollutants easier to understand.

Promila Sharma - IndiaINDIA

“A lot of people do not know that great things are happening in India,” says Promila Sharma. She explains that cleanup efforts take time but that real change is coming. She has helped Blacksmith identify and assess over 400 polluted sites in the country. The government now has a national plan for rehabilitating the worst of these sites. Leyan Wang

CHINA

Leyan Wang has been working on a pilot project to detox polluted rice paddies in China. She says there is a food contamination problem in areas where chemicals have polluted the farmland and the crops grown on them. Sometimes, Leyan tells us, local farmers sell their contaminated crops, which end up in the food supply. As a result, the produce that people buy in supermarkets and other stores might be contaminated.

Roath Sith - CambodiaCAMBODIA

Roath Sith is helping Blacksmith assess polluted sites in Cambodia, including many contaminated by PCBs. The chemicals, he says, end up in the food supply. Roath used to train youths to debate environmental issues on television. That government program was very successful in raising awareness about pollution in the country. In the countryside, he used to work with monks to talk to villagers about the environment. Duong To - Vietnam

Nguyen Trinh Huong - VietnamVIETNAM

When an American plane went down in North Vietnam during the war, the story goes that a villager knew how to smelt down the plane for valuable aluminum. Today, that village is one of thousands of toxic “craft” villages that dot the Vietnamese landscape. Duong To and Nguyen Trinh Huong are working with Blacksmith on a plan to clean up this polluting legacy.

Budi Susilorini - indonesiaINDONESIA

Among other projects, Budi Susilorini is working with Blacksmith in Indonesia to test the borax method, which eliminates the use of toxic mercury in the gold mining process. Indonesia is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of gold. Over 300,000 artisanal miners (including many children) release more than 1000 tonnes of toxic mercury every year. While Budi and her team have assessed hundreds of hotspots in Indonesia, she tells us that there are still many more. Larah ortega ibanez - Philippines

PHILIPPINES

Larah Ortega Ibañez oversees a variety of projects for Blacksmith in the Philippines, including both research and cleanup. Larah is currently preparing for a large-scale project aimed at reducing heavy metal contamination in fishponds in the river systems surrounding Manila.

Daniel Estrada - MexicoMEXICO

“Blacksmith is working in collaboration with the Mexican Government to solve a 500-year-old toxic problem,” says Daniel Estrada.  Traditional Mexican potters use toxic lead glazes to produce the colorful and popular wares that are used to cook and serve food every day.  The children of these artisans are particularly vulnerable to lead poisoning because of their smaller bodies and developing brains. Many have high levels of lead in their blood.  Daniel is working on getting these potters to switch to a non-toxic glaze.  He also works on the Toxic Sites Identification Program in Mexico.

Lilian Veas - Chile

CHILE

Lilian Veas is part of Fundacion Chile, a nonprofit organization that partners with the Chilean Government and private enterprise to share technology and knowledge to help the country deal with challenges and opportunities. She oversees Blacksmith’s Toxic Sites Identification Program in Chile. A chemical engineer, Lilian has extensive experience dealing with evironmental health issues and contaminated sites.

URUGUAY

Many informal settlements are located on or near contaminated sites in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, and cleaning them up is a priority of the local government. Dr. Amalia Laborde’s background as a clinical toxicologist is extremely useful in her work with Blacksmith in Uruguay. She is the Director of the Toxicology Department at the Medical School of the Universidad de la Republica in Uruguay and also the head of the Pedriatic Environmental Unit at the State Administration of Health Services.

ARGENTINA

As a pediatrician/neonatologist, Dr. Lillian Corra has done extensive work to raise awareness about children’s health in relation to the environment. She is the Director of the Medical Specialist Program on Health and Environment at the School of Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires. She connects with global aid agencies and South American governments on behalf of Blacksmith, which acts as Secretariat of the new Global Alliance on Health and Pollution. She also works with on the Toxics Sites Identification Program in Argentina, which has, in some cases, led local authorities to halt development on contaminated sites.

Johny Ponce, PeruPERU

Johny Ponce has been working on environmental health projects for 15 years.  Currently, he works with Blacksmith on the Toxic Sites Identification Program in Peru and coordinates with the local authorities to share expertise in toxic sites management and cleanup. Johny, who has a PhD in Environmental Health, is a professor and a researcher at Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. He is also the president of the Center for Research in Environmental Health (CREEH Perú).

Petr Sharov, Russia

RUSSIA

Petr Sharov manages the Toxics Sites Identification Program in Russia and helps oversee Blacksmith’s work in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. He has a Masters degree in environmental science and is the founder and president of the nonprofit Far East Environmental Health Fund. Petr managed a lead cleanup project that was recently completed in the Russian Far East, and is currently publishing a paper describing the activities and results.

Ulugov Umidjon Amonovich - Tajikistan TAJIKISTAN

Ulugov Umidjon Amonovichis (Umed) is a lawyer and the Deputy Director of the nonprofit group Youth of the 21st Century in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, where he seems to know everyone! He has consulted on a variety of international projects, and is active in many environmental and human rights advocacy issues. Umed is currently working on a proposal to help the government review its current chemicals policy and create a national strategy to identify and remediate toxic hotspots. Dr. Rovshan Abbasov - Azerbaijan

AZERBAIJAN

Dr. Rovshan Abbasov is an Associate Professor at Kazar University, teaching classes on environmental science, geography, disaster management, water resource management, climate chance, and related issues. Rovshan has consulted on projects for a variety of international organizations, including the World Bank and OXFAM.  His team has identified and screened over 50 sites in the first year of Blacksmith’s Toxic Sites Identification Program in Azerbaijan. Blacksmith is now working with the relevant ministries in Azerbaijan to create a national strategy to address abandoned waste sites, and to design a pilot cleanup project.

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We’ve Passed A Red Line – A Conversation with Alexey Yablokov (VIDEO)

Mar 20

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“We passed the red line,” says prominent Russian scientist Dr. Alexey Yablokov, who stopped by Blacksmith’s offices for a chat recently when he was in New York.

Dr. Yablokov is one of the world’s leading authorities on radiation contamination. He is a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and was an advisor to the Russian government under Yeltsin and Gorbachev.  He has worked for years to rein in the “Cold War inheritance” of toxic pollution. Today, he continues bringing attention to the persistent problem of legacy pollution as well as contamination brought on by modern industry.

In the interview, he notes the vast amount of chemicals and radionuclides that have permeated the environment since the 1950s, and he attributes that to the “disappearance” of a staggering amount of people from the world population today.  (Watch the video for the actual number)

Why then isn’t pollution bigger news?  Well, because pollution is, in many ways, invisible. He believes it is an issue many people fail to notice, especially when they are being poisoned by low doses of pollutants in an environment that presents no immediate danger. “No immediate danger,” Dr. Yablokov points out, does not mean no danger.

He is especially critical of the nuclear industry.  He co-authored a controversial book Chernobyl:Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment that claims official discussions about Chernobyl have largely undercounted the disaster’s true toll and that many findings reported in Eastern European scientific literature were ignored.

According to Dr. Yablokov, one of the solutions to the pollution problem is education.  Only when people know more about what is happening can they take steps to keep themselves safe.

Dr. Yablokov is currently working on helping to identify and assess hotspots in Russia for Blacksmith’s Toxic Sites Identification Program. He is also writing several papers for the Blacksmith Journal of Health and Pollution.

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Detoxing Polluted Rice Paddies With Lime

Nov 28

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Rice Paddies are the cradle of life in many countries.  But some have become conduits of death and disease because of industrial pollution.

A famous case of rice padi poisoning was documented in Toyama prefecture in Japan in the 1960s. Mining activities had polluted the region’s river with cadmium and other heavy metals. The contaminated water was then used to irrigate the padi fields.  Unfortunately, rice absorbs cadmium particularly well.  As a result, the contaminated crop poisoned many of the villagers, who fell ill with a devastatingly painful disease locals called itai-itai, which literally means ouch-ouch. The removal of cadmium in Toyama was just completed in March this year after almost three decades.

Such instances of rice padi pollution and poisoning, however, continues in many other countries. Currently, Blacksmith is piloting the Guixi rice padi cleanup project in Jianxi province in China. But rather than removing and replacing the contaminated soil as I believed they did in Japan, we are hoping that the method we are trying out will be easier and quicker.  It involves applying lime to the soil followed with a soil amendment that consists largely of a by-product from wheat milling.  This should adjust the pH of the soil so that is will “fix” the cadmium, preventing it from leaching into and contaminating the groundwater, while also preventing the toxin from traveling upwards into the rice crop.

In Jianxi province, the contamination comes from Guixi smelter, the largest copper factory in China, which started operation in the 1980s.  The pollution includes copper, cadmium, arsenic, lead and other heavy metals as well as acid gas, but cadmium contamination is the most extensive.

All the soil tested had more cadmium than the agricultural standard of 0.3 mg/kg, sometimes over by a factor of 10 or more.  Rice grown in the area was also tested – 100% of samples were over the cadmium standard, and 37% of the samples were over the lead standard.

15 villages with a total population of 10,000 people are affected. An estimated at 132 hectares of rice paddies and 6 hectares of vegetable farmland are contaminated.  The goal of our pilot project is to find a way to make the rice paddies and farmland suitable for growing food once more, and of course, to eliminate the health threat.

We used worms to “eat” up toxins in the soil in India.  We hope that a little lime and wheat by-product will do the trick in China. Read the Guixi rice padi remediation pilot study here.

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One-Stop Shop For Pollution Solutions

Sep 14

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Retailers figured it out a long time ago. They could improve business if they made shopping easier. So they began to offer consumers everything they might need under one roof. Hence the success and popularity of one-stop shops. In a way, we are applying the same concept with GAHP, our one-stop shop for pollution solutions. The newly formed GAHP, or Global Alliance on Health and Pollution, will make pollution cleanup easier for low and middle-income countries looking for help.

While the international community has resources available to help clean up toxic pollution, navigating the process can be daunting. Expertise is available from different organizations and agencies depending on the type of toxin, the source of pollution, and where the hotspot is located. Often countries are plagued by more than one type of pollution problem, making the task of looking for help even more complex. The time and effort taken to find the right match can delay life-saving cleanup.

With GAHP, that process is now simplified. Instead of having to “shop around,” countries can now turn to one source – the GAHP – to access multiple lines of support. This is how it works. GAHP is made up of an unprecedented international alliance of members that include the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and UNIDO, among other agencies. All GAHP members have an interest in fighting pollution. They just have different expertise and rules governing their operations. By banding together, they can help fill the gaps. If one member cannot offer a complete solution, maybe two or three working together can.

Whenever a country seeks help, GAHP members get together to see who can help with what. For example, one GAHP member might have a program that targets lead cleanup, while another may only deal with education. Working together, they can help a country clean up lead-contaminated hotspots AND establish an education program to prevent further pollution.

Different GAHP members might also get together to help a country deal with a range of pollution problems. For example, in the Philippines, GAHP members convened to strategize on how they could help the government solve its toxic pollution problems. The USAID Philippines mission expressed interest to deal with artisanal gold mining issues in the country, while the World Bank plans to support a US$50 million initiative to begin cleanup of the Marilao-Meycauayan-Obando river system. Meanwhile, Blacksmith will continue to provide technical assistance and support for smaller remediation projects. Before the meeting, activities in the Philippines in this area were piecemeal, and there was no large institutional support for dealing with problems at scale.

What we are trying to do with GAHP is to make pollution cleanup easier. If cleanup is easier, we believe more cleanups will take place. GAHP is the first ever one-stop shop for the world’s pollution fighting needs. Our doors are open.

To join GAHP or seek GAHP help, contact the GAHP Secretariat at info@gahp.net

Read about the GAHP in the Huffington Post: Global Alliance to Fight Toxic Pollution

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A Love Letter to Neglected and Reviled Places

Aug 8

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When Andrew Blackwell was researching his new book Visit Sunny Chernobyl, he contacted us to learn a little more about our work and about Blacksmith’s list of world’s worst polluted places. Turns out he was visiting some of these very same hotspots.

Now that the book is out, we heartily recommend that everyone pick up Blackwell’s unusual travel journal, which opens the door to a whole world that many people avoid.

Blackwell describes his book as a “love letter to neglected and reviled places.”  What he has done is to reveal the beauty and human dignity that can rise above the threat of toxic pollution, and to reaffirm that these hotspots and the people who live there should not be ignored. The reality is that even though toxic pollution puts over 100 million people at risk, it remains one of the most under-reported global problems.

Look for Blackwell soon at a Blacksmith Pollution Talk event.

In the meantime, I recently reconnected with Blackwell and spoke to him about his environmental adventure.

Blacksmith: What has the response to your book been like?

Blackwell: It’s been really great. People often start out thinking it’s going to be another environmental screed, or just some more environmental horror stories. But it’s really not! It’s much more of a personal attempt to get to know people and places under environment threat—to go beyond horror stories or grossness to embrace and engage with places we might otherwise just be disgusted by. And to hear from readers who really got that message—not to mention groups like Blacksmith—is really gratifying.

Blacksmith: What did you learn about toxic pollution and the people living in those places?

Blackwell: More than anything, that polluted places don’t always look polluted. I think sometimes we expect a really bad environmental problem—and the health costs that go with it—to be really dramatic. And that’s often not so. But even though this makes it harder (for a layperson) to identify the severity of a problem, I think it’s a good thing. It’s important to realize that places with severe pollution are a lot less different from our own cities and homes than we might imagine. And that makes it so much more obvious why these places are worth fighting for.

Blacksmith: Did you know much about toxic pollution before you went on your journey?

Blackwell: Some, but not a huge amount. That was one of the best parts of the journey: learning about the details of all these issues as I made my way through each location. I think of it as having been on a series of the best science class field trips ever.

Blacksmith: How did you decide on your itinerary?

Blackwell: I wanted to get a nice range of different parts of the world and different environmental issues. So although the former Soviet Union has many, many interesting polluted places, once I’d been to Chernobyl I moved on to other parts of the world. (Similarly, I didn’t revisit the subject of radioactive contamination.) And while it might sound strange, I also tried to think like a tourist—about what kinds of activities and sights a particular location might offer. The whole idea wasn’t just to investigate pollution, but to have an adventure, to meet all kinds of different people, and tell the personal story of this great environmental odyssey that I’d set myself to.

Blacksmith: Did you see a difference between the sites you visited in the parts of the world where Blacksmith does cleanup, and the locations you visited in the “developed” world?

Blackwell: A lot less than you might think. For one thing, whether in China or in Texas, I met a lot of people who felt they had no choice but to live with toxic pollution—unless they wanted to leave their livelihoods or their homes. But on a brighter note, I also found that those same people often had a pretty nuanced understanding of the environmental problems they were living with. And that was true both in Ukraine and in India.

Blacksmith: Are you doing anything else related to pollution?

Blackwell: Lately I’m very interested in continuing my travels as a “pollution tourist” locally, exploring some of the Superfund sites in New York City, where I live. What holds true for the rest of the world holds true at home: in polluted places, any kind of engagement—even as a traveler or a tourist—is a healthy force.

Gold Mining in Tanzania

Jul 10

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Child gold miners in Tanzania. Credit: Madeline Cottingham and Evan Simon.

Recently, a young environmentalist, who had done some work for Blacksmith, returned from Tanzania with some fascinating photographs and stories to share.

Madeline and her friend Evan were there to help the Kilimanjaro Hope Organization (KIHO), a small NGO established by four local activists to solve environmental issues in rural villages.

In Gonja, high in the remote Pare mountains, the pair saw and documented the damage a gold rush can do in just a couple of years. Here is what they told us:

We spent a week in Gonja, a rural mountain village, where illegal small-scale gold mining has polluted the village’s only river and primary water source. The pollution was highly visible. The mining released a metallic sediment into the river that would form a red sheen on the surface of the water. Our host, Seraphine Mngullu, grew up in Gonja. After taking us to the river he told us that just two years ago, before gold was discovered in Gonja, the water was clear. When we visited, the water was a pale brown mush. Additionally, the mines litter the sides of the riverbank, eroding nearby farmland and drying the river to a stagnant stream.

Life in Gonja has been altered by gold mining. Once a traditional farming village, the area has been plagued by drought, forcing villagers to seek additional income. The discovery of gold has shifted the local economy. Children, as young as eight, are dropping out of school to work in the mines to provide for their families.

The locals are very aware of the dangers from the mining process. Gonjans halted all agricultural and municipal use of their water.  The river was their only source for water and if it hadn’t been for the work of KIHO, they might have never recovered.  KIHO helped Gonjans discover a spring further up the Pare Mountains and built a pipe that carried the water down to their village.

Gonjans feel strongly that gold mining has irrevocably changed their village for the worse. One local told us, “It is very sad, what has happened to the river.” Gold mining is viewed as a way to provide for their families when there are no other options.

See more photographs and read from field notes from a warming land. All images are by Madeline Cottingham and Evan Simon.

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New Lead Limits for U.S. Children Expose Plight of Others

Jun 12

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Children at the site of the world's worst outbreak of lead poisoning in Nigeria

The CDC recently lowered the recommended limit for lead exposure in young children from 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood, to 5. This means that lead levels above 5 ug dl in children will now be considered unsafe.

What’s interesting is that according to a CDC spokesperson, “…as we remove lead from the environment, it’s expected that this reference level will be going down, because we still want to be identifying children at the highest levels.”

So as the number of children in the U.S. with unsafe lead levels fall and we come closer to eliminating childhood lead poisoning in this country,  perhaps we might see the CDC tolerance for lead in young children drop to zero since, really, no level of lead is considered safe in children.

What this tightening of lead standards exposes is the great divide between children in the U.S. and those in some of the world’s worst polluted places.

Lead poisoning accounts for at least 0.6% of the global burden of disease (WHO, 2009). Blacksmith considers it one of the world’s worst pollution problems.  The problem is pretty much contained in the U.S., where much of the risk from lead comes from old lead paint and plumbing in houses built before 1978, as well as some imported products that escape inspection. But in countries where there is little regulation, the lead numbers registered in children tell a devastating story.

Keeping in mind that levels around 45 ug dl are considered acute, take a look at some of these figures we’ve come across.

  • In Haina in the Dominican Republic, a hotspot of lead contamination because of improper battery recycling, we have seen blood lead levels as high as 234 ug dl.
  • In 2009, a  lead poisoning outbreak in Senegal went undetected until 18 children died. The highest lead levels recorded in children between one and five years-old was 158 ug dl.
  • In Nigeria, the high price of gold prompted a mini gold rush in 2010, and villagers took to mining the lead-rich ore. This resulted in the world’s worst outbreak of lead poisoning.  Over  400 children were killed.  Lead levels as high as 150 ug dl were recorded. (see photos)
  • In Mexico, where many of the country’s 50,000 potters use toxic lead-based glazes, we found 10-year old twins Lupita and Juan with blood lead levels of 20 and 27 ug dl respectively. They are typical of the children in these artisan communities.

In all the above examples, blood lead levels in the children dropped dramatically after remediation efforts. But even if we achieve 50% decreases, none of the children will reach the new U.S. standard of 5 ug dl.

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A Tour of Asia’s Toxic Hotspots

May 31

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Kids in Indonesia

Kids barefoot on a toxic field in Indonesia

Recently, John Keith, Blacksmith’s globe-trotting expert, led an armchair tour of Asia’s toxic hotspots for a group in NYC.  An environmental engineer, John has worked on numerous projects in 72 countries and counting, and he has plenty of stories to tell. Here is a brief itinerary of the tour for those who missed it. Look out for more lectures in Blacksmith’s Pollution Talks series.

1. Sumgayit and Absheron Peninsular, Azerbaijan

Sumgayit was a major Soviet industrial center with more than 40 factories manufacturing industrial and agricultural chemicals, and innumerable oil wells. About 20% of Soviet Era polluting factories are reportedly still operating.  Even if all the polluting industries are dealt with, there remains a significant legacy cleanup challenge.

2.  Mailuu Suu, Kyrgyzstan

This is home to a former Soviet-era uranium plant. From 1946-1968, the plant produced and processed more than 10,000 metric tons of uranium ore — materials eventually used to create the Soviet Union’s first atomic bomb. What remains now are not atomic bombs, but 1.96 million cubic meters of radioactive mining waste that has contaminated the water. Blacksmith is currently working to filter water supplies for schools.

3. Ankleshwar, India

Reportedly the largest industrial estate in India, Ankleshwar dumps its waste into the Narmada River, contaminating the local source of fish. Air pollution from the many factories is also a major issue.

4. Ranipet, India

Leather tanning operations are a big source of contamination throughout Asia. Chromate salts are used in the tanning process, and chromium is the main toxic pollutant of concern.  Ranipet is a hub of leather tanning in South India.  Also in the area is an abandoned chromate salts factory, where there is an estimated 150,000 tons of solid waste accumulated over two decades of plant operation stacked in an open yard on the premises of the factory.

5. Vellore, India

Recycling of used lead acid batteries (ULAB) with poor environmental controls creates one of the world’s worst pollution problems. The activity is done globally, often by small operations with few, if any, controls. In Vellore, Blacksmith is working with a battery recycler who has shown a willingness to improve his practices, and after the improvements are made, Blacksmith will move to remediate a contaminated residential area and a primary school.

6.  Marilao/Mecauacan River, Philippines

The Marilao, Meycauyan and Obando river system is home to hundreds of thousands of people and numerous industries, most of which pump their wastewater untreated into the river. The extensive aquaculture industry at the mouth of the river is a major source of fish for the people of Manila and testing has shown the fish to be contaminated with heavy metals.

7. Kalimantan, Indonesia

Artisanal gold mining results in the release of about 1,000 tons of mercury per year, which constitutes about 30 percent of the world’s mercury emissions. It is estimated that there are between 10 and 15 million artisanal and small-scale gold miners worldwide, including 4.5 million women and 600,000 children.  Mercury is boiled off to extract the gold – a process that often takes place in homes.  Blacksmith has been working to introduce a simple retort to miners in Indonesia that can use to recapture most of the mercury used. Blacksmith is also working with partners to introduce the use of non-toxic borax instead of mercury to extract gold.

8. Cinangka, Indonesia

The improper disposal of waste from the recycling of used lead acid batteries has contaminated the land with toxic lead.  A school with 500 children is located nearby.  Children often play barefoot on a field, exposing them to lead poisoning.  Blacksmith is working to excavate the lead waste and contaminated soil, and move the toxic material to a secure, lined landfill.  The local authorities plan to build a soccer stadium over the site once it is cleaned.

Mother’s Day in some of the world’s worst polluted places

May 9

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This Mother’s Day, as we celebrate, thank and honor our mothers for all the things they do for us, I thought I would share some images of mothers in some of the world’s worst polluted places.

I see them all the time when I visit polluted hotspots where, really, no one should be living.  I see them going about their daily, often back-breaking work, many times with children in tow.  Like many moms the world over, these women are often too busy taking care of daily necessities to do anything else, let alone ponder the extremely contaminated environment in which they happen to live.

But these women are often the key to change once they realize their children are being poisoned.  They are the ones we usually work with to raise awareness about pollution in their communities and what they can do to keep safe, until the cleanup is completed. So to these mothers on the frontlines of pollution… thanks. We are working on giving them the ultimate Mother’s Day gift – a poison-free home.

Taking a break from scavenging at a dumpsite in India

Mother and child living near the contaminated Kharkai river in eastern India

A woman extracting gold from ore in Senegal, with children and food nearby. There are over 4.5 million women and some 600,000 children who are involved in artisanal gold mining around the world, and who are exposed to direct contact with toxic mercury used in the process.

Daily housework in the middle of Ghana's notorious Sodom and Gomorrah e-wasteland - the Agbogbloshie market.

Mother sleeping with her child in the middle of Ghana's Agbogbloshie market, where most of the world's e-waste ends up.

A Blacksmith team can be seen in the background doing some site testing

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Incubating Ideas for Change at the Bellagio Center

Apr 18

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This July, we are returning to the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in Italy to convene a third meeting of world leaders and experts on pollution, this time to create a global alliance to deal with legacy pollution at scale.

Our previous two meetings at the Bellagio Center, held in 2007 and 2012, were instrumental in bringing the issue of pollution to the world stage.  The Bellagio Center has incubated some of the most innovative ideas and has had a record of major impact, including meetings that led to the Green Revolution and the Global AIDS vaccine initiative.

As we get ready to take the fight against pollution to the next level, here is a look back at my statement about participating in that first conference as recounted in  Voices and Visions from Bellagio, which also includes contributions from other Bellagio Center participants such as Maya Angelou, Joseph Heller and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Creating change is difficult. Especially global change. Inspiration is one thing, but, as we have heard so often, 99 percent of work is really perspiration.

When we decided to tackle pollution at a global level, we knew we had an idea that was extremely important, that would save lives. But the problem is new to most people. The problem of pollution in developing countries has no think tanks, no networked conferences, no guest appearance presentations at Davos. But it kills millions, most of them children, and is inherently solvable.

To tackle this problem help is needed on all fronts. One organization cannot solve this on its own. Instead, we need to convince others that they can make a difference, and show them how. This has been Blacksmith’s strategy from the beginning, reaching out to decision-makers, showing them the problem and the solution, and coaxing them into action. Starting from zero, it’s a daunting process.

The Bellagio Center has been the most welcome partner in that process! We were fortunate to host the inaugural conference for the Health and Pollution Fund at the Center, which kicked off the process for dealing with global pollution. And because we had the resources of the Bellagio Center, we were able to attract the top people from many international agencies and governments to the conference, and gain their concurrence that this problem needs to be addressed. Our participants came from 12 countries, all at a senior level, and it was partly the thrill of visiting this beautiful and renowned place that brought them all together.

We are now well on the way to implementing a global strategy for dealing with pollution around the world. We could not have begun this process without Bellagio.

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