There's still oil in the water
And we're not told much about the clean-up operation
Hello and welcome to this issue of our newsletter. Every week, Ariel and Khalil, writers based in Mauritius, investigate the impact the oil spill is having on the country and its people, politics and nature.
In an explosive piece for Forbes magazine this week, Nishan Degnarain interviewed Ashok Subron of Rezistans ek Alternativ, a leftwing activist party which has provided ample support to inhabitants of impacted areas.
Here are a few highlights:
Hunger and Poverty
“Even if someone was not able to earn an income in the past, they could still go fishing in the lagoon and find a fish to eat or sell locally. This meant that while not wealthy, no-one was ever hungry in Mahebourg. The lagoon always provided. A lot more women were involved in this informal economy. The Wakashio wreck disrupted all of this. The South East has been brutally hit. We are now seeing begging and genuine hunger - phenomena we have never seen before in this region.
Due to the effect of the debt and unemployment, local volunteers organized the distribution of food packs soon after the oil spill. Initially, they thought they would only focus on the skippers and those directly impacted by the closure of the lagoon. However, when they started distributing these food packs, they started discovering just how widely the Wakashio oil spill had impacted the region. It was the entire belt of the South East that was suffering.
l’express has an important piece on oil spill-related poverty here.
Health Problems
We surveyed 2457 people. Of this 2313 (94%) reported adverse health outcomes linked to the Wakashio. There both physical health issues as well as mental health (trauma and post-traumatic stress syndrome or PTSD) issues.
Subron states that people are experiencing breathing difficulties, skin problems and infections (especially those who went into the sea to help clear it of the oil) and insomnia. He also says that he hasn’t seen the WHO or Japanese organisations actively helping out the community.
Oil
I’ve seen pictures of a strange, foamy substance around Ile aux Aigrettes, which some suggest are chemical dispersants and other solvents used to clear the oil. I don’t know for sure, though, because so little has been communicated to us on the clean-up operation.
Yesterday, Defimedia reported that PolyEco, a cleaning company commissioned by Japan P&I Club, had successfully cleaned 21 km of lagoon across the south-east coast. Yet people are still reporting that oil can be found in the region.
Here’s Subron again:
There is still a lot of oil everywhere. There are areas where the oil is dark and saturated in the mangroves and coast. There are other areas where we pump the oil out and a few days later, the oil reappears. We believe the oil is in the groundwater.
There is also a thin film of oil that appears across the lagoon. This is just the visible parts. We do not know what the chemical consequences are of the oil spill or oil in the biological chain. This data is not being collected - either by the Government of the Japanese organizations leading the oil spill response.
When we enter the water, we feel the oil on our feet. We can even smell the oil in various regions. The lagoon has changed.
In this issue
Why I don’t think you should swim in Blue Bay right now
Rising Ocean’s must-see video
300 Million Dollar Silence
The latest
⚫ You can totally swim in Blue Bay now, says the government.
But the question is - should you?
The government have been rather effusive in their claims that the lagoon has been cleaned and is safe for bathers. Fishing has also been allowed again.
This is the same government that won’t release the necropsy report for the 52 dead whales that washed up on our beaches. The same government that has a stake in the Mahebourg Fish Farms, who claimed that those farms weren’t affected by the spill; the same government who had a notoriously small sample size of fish tested for hydrocarbons and arsenic, and who didn’t update the public on results of further tests, if ever those were conducted.
The members of this current political party in power won’t be around in a decade or two if other more subtle, insidious effects of the spill will make themselves known in people’s bodies - cancer, for instance.
I wouldn’t bathe there or eat produce caught from that region. If you want to financially help fisherpeople and inhabitants of the coast, I’d recommend getting in touch with CARES and/or Rezistans ek Alternativ.
More: The Minister of Environment’s rationale can be read here.
⚫ Rising Ocean’s must-see video
Rising Ocean is the production company of the Center for Alternative Research and Studies (CARES), a Mauritius-based research organization that publishes environmental, social and economic issues around the Indian Ocean.
Their video, Surviving Wakashio, is a must-see. It’s short but poignant.
More: Watch it here.
⚫ Japan’s USD$300M deal with Mauritius
In another excellent piece for Forbes, Nishan Degnarain suggests that the Japanese government’s ‘rapid resolution’ to the oil spill – to the tune of a $300 million loan – will avoid a thorough investigation into the cause of the incident.
He writes the following:
There was no mention of Japanese assistance into the root cause of the Wakashio incident, or any assistance from Japanese Law Enforcement officials into the critical pieces of equipment and documentation currently missing from the inquiry, and being held by Japanese companies.
This came as assistance from Governments around the world (U.S., Australia, U.K., France, Canada) appeared to be elbowed out by the IMO and Japanese companiespresent on the ground early during the oil spill, as they attempted to control the facts that were being released about the incident.Despite being in the country for two days, Motegi did not meet with any of the leaders of the local communities who were on the front lines of the oil spill and had to build their own oil protection booms.
More: Read the whole piece here.
I’d buckle up for more chaos before 2020’s over. The Captain of the Wakashio is due to appear in court this week; I’m also following the case of Soopramanien Kistnen, a government political agent who appears to have been murdered – Ariel.