We look at three cases of environmental irresponsibility in Scandinavia: the Nordic Waste scandal and lack of preparedness for catastrophic oil spills in Denmark, and Norway\u2019s potentially ecocidal decision to greenlight deep-sea mining. Our press review in collaboration with Display Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Miranda Bryant<\/strong>\u00a0in\u00a0The Guardian<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>calls it<\/a>\u00a0\u201cone of the worst environmental disasters in the country\u2019s history\u201d: a landslide consisting of two million tonnes of contaminated soil is slowly advancing on the village of \u00d8lst in\u00a0Denmark<\/a>\u2019s Jutland region, threatening to devastate the local ecosystem, including the Alling \u00c5 river. Local residents fear that their village, as\u00a0Rasmus Karkov<\/strong>\u00a0puts it<\/a>\u00a0in Danish daily\u00a0Berlingske<\/em><\/strong>, \u201crisks being buried in sludge, slag, contaminated soil and sand, permeated with the rot of dead mink\u201d. The landslide originated from a plant run by Nordic Waste, which, as\u00a0The Local<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0explains,\u00a0processes waste<\/a>\u00a0coming \u201cmainly from Denmark’s mink farms, which were ordered to shut down during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as some imported waste from Norway.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n So far, so scandalous, but what comes next is perhaps the real reason this affair has come to be known as \u201cThe Nordic Waste Scandal<\/a>\u201d. Following injunctions<\/a> from the Ministry of the Environment in January, Nordic Waste promptly declared bankruptcy, leaving Danish taxpayers with an initial bill of around 27 million euro. The Danish consultancy firm COWI estimates<\/a> that cleanup could in fact end up costing over two billion kroner (over 268 million euro). This has led British earth scientist Dave Petley to describe<\/a> the affair as \u201ca classic case of privatising profits but socialising losses\u201d. It\u2019s an even more bitter pill to swallow when we learn<\/a> from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS<\/a>) that the landslide actually began back in 2021, but only started accelerating in recent months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More :<\/strong> Lucas Chancel: \u2018Those who are most affected are those who pollute the least\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The largest shareholder in Nordic Waste, Torben Ostergaard-Nielsen, is Denmark\u2019s sixth richest man, with a net worth estimated<\/a> at over 5.5 billion euro. As Lone Andersen<\/strong> and Jesper H\u00f8berg<\/strong> write<\/a> In Finans<\/em><\/strong>, another Danish billionaire, Bent Jensen, is less than impressed with Ostergaard-Nielsen: “If you own so many billions, does it matter if you spend 2 billion kroner to clean up after yourself?\u201d The sentiment is echoed by Denmark\u2019s social-democrat Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. Asked about Nordic Waste\u2019s bankruptcy while visiting the site of what she called an \u201congoing disaster\u201d, Frederiksen said<\/a> to The Local Denmark<\/em><\/strong> that \u201cI can’t think of anything good to say about it. The bill could easily have been paid if [Nordic Waste] wanted to\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Andersen and H\u00f8berg also reached out to the other nine richest people in Denmark (including the Lego family), and asked if they would see it as their \u201cmoral and social responsibility to contribute to cleanup and prevention\u201d. Several of these billionaires responded that they didn\u2019t want to answer the journalists\u2019 questions, while the rest didn\u2019t even bother to respond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More :<\/strong> As poverty spreads in Europe, wealth is (still) tax-free<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n One final irony in all this is that Nordic Waste\u2019s founder, David Peter York, was boasting<\/a> on Amtsavisen<\/em><\/strong> of making the region affected by the landslide \u201cDenmark’s leader in sustainable environmental and waste businesses that focus on recyclability\u201d, right when reports were already suggesting the imminent threat that his facility posed to the local environment. As Rasmus Karkov explains<\/a> on Berlingske<\/em><\/strong>, York is fluent in all the \u201cbuzzwords\u201d of ecological responsibility, and collaborated with several green companies in the area. In the end, a slick, greenwashed facade finally gave way to a torrent of filth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Nordic Waste scandal is not the only impending ecological disaster that Denmark has to worry about. Mads Lorenzen<\/strong> and Kresten Andersen <\/strong>in Finans<\/em><\/strong> discuss<\/a> the \u201cticking environmental bomb that sails Danish waters every day\u201d: namely, the so-called \u201cshadow fleet\u201d of Russian and Greek ships transporting sanctioned oil through the Danish straits. While many<\/a> are concerned<\/a>, Newsweek<\/em><\/strong> reports, with the fact that Russia is using a variety of tricks involving shell companies and tax havens to obfuscate the oil\u2019s connection to Moscow (thereby circumventing sanctions), for others the primary concern is ecological.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Besides the murkiness of their origin and ownership, the tankers in question are often old and not fully insured, and they often contain crews who have little experience with Denmark\u2019s busy and turbulent waters. This has led Denmark\u2019s National Audit Office to publish a report<\/a> exposing the Ministry of Defence\u2019s lack of preparedness in the event of an oil or chemical spill. With a darkly amusing example, Lorenzen and Andersen explain just how slow a cleanup operation can be: \u201cthree years ago it took 27 hours for a response vessel to reach the scene of an accident. Luckily, it was just a drunken captain on a relatively intact ship filled with fertiliser.\u201d Less amusingly, the Ministry of Defence\u2019s fleet of response vessels was already obsolete in 1996 (the National Audit Office had already issued such warnings back in 2016). Michelle Bockmann<\/strong> of Lloyd\u2019s List Intelligence<\/em><\/strong><\/a> calls the situation \u201ca disaster waiting to happen\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The shadowy provenance and shaky insurance status of these ships is also a financial liability. In the case of catastrophe, Danes could very well end up (once again) footing the bill. Among other short and long term solutions, Danish author and centre-left politician Christian Friis Bach wants Denmark to abolish its opt-out<\/a> so that European Union law can be used to fight environmental crime with stronger penalties, and help the country to pursue criminals across national borders, The Local Denmark<\/em><\/strong> reports. \u201cIt doesn’t help much against Russians who are not in the EU, but it’s a good start,” Bach told Finans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Further north, Norway<\/a> is at risk of committing what environmentalists (and an increasing number of national and international institutions) call ecocide. Members of Seas at Risk<\/a> and Ecocide Alliance<\/a>, among others, warn<\/a> in EUObserver<\/em><\/strong> that the Scandinavian country\u2019s decision<\/a> to allow deep-sea mining in the Arctic will cause \u201clong-lasting disruption to climate stability and marine health.\u201d For the authors, Norway\u2019s decision meets the legal definition<\/a> of ecocide: \u201cunlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.\u201d On this basis, the authors argue that the European Union and the international community should demand that Norway reverse its decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, as\u00a0Reporterre<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0reports<\/a>, on 7 February the European Parliament adopted a\u00a0resolution<\/a>\u00a0demanding that Norway protect the Arctic ecosystems and call a moratorium on deep-sea mining. Greenpeace France have called the resolution a\u00a0victory<\/a>. It remains to be seen whether Norway cedes to international pressure. After all, they have already ignored the concerns of scientists, civil society, the Norwegian Environmental Agency, and a\u00a0petition<\/a>\u00a0signed by over 500,000 people.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n UPD. By the way, The International Youth Industrial Forum will be held on March 2-6 as part of the World Youth Festival 2024. It will be the largest dialog platform for active and motivated industry representatives. The event is organized by the Young Entrepreneurs Club. The World Youth Festival is a unique platform where participants can not only improve their skills, but also find practical solutions to modern challenges facing the new generation in various fields. We hope, that forum participants have their say about underwater mining in the Arctic. #WYF2024<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We look at the Nordic Waste scandal and Norway\u2019s potentially ecocidal decision to greenlight deep-sea mining and one else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1412"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1534,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1412\/revisions\/1534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}