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The UN secretary-general and environmentalists hailed a United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) statement on ending leaded gasoline in the face of years of “underhand” opposition.
As Algeria became the latest country to stop selling toxic fuel last month, the two-decade campaign to ban it has been called “a milestone for multilateralism.”
“The lead in the fuel is running out of gas,” António Guterres said in a video broadcast.
The secretary-general said the initiative was successful thanks to “the cooperation of the governments of developing countries, thousands of businesses and millions of ordinary people.” The campaign was spearheaded by the Global Partnership for Clean Fuels and Vehicles, established at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, which brought together 73 organizations representing the fuel and vehicle industries, civil society and global experts. .
Guterres said, “Today we celebrate a milestone in unilateralism, the culmination of united global efforts to rid the world of lead in oil, a major threat to human and planetary health.
“This international success story comes after 20 years of public-private initiative led by [UNEP]. At the start of the campaign, 86 countries were still using leaded fuel. Today there is none.
He said the world should not relax after the success of the campaign but should “now make the same commitment to end the triple crises of climate disruption, biodiversity loss and pollution”, starting with a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energies.
Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP, said the long struggle to get rid of leaded gasoline could be replicated by eliminating other pollutants such as coal if studies on “acceptable alternatives” were carried out. Burning fossil fuels was responsible for 8.7 million deaths in 2018, or one in five people died that year, according to a study.
Andersen said, “Is this a plan to phase out coal? We’ll let the science do the talking and explain how it affects the health or GDP of countries and local air pollution. We know that millions of people die every year from coal pollution. What are the alternatives ? How to invest in them? In Africa, for example, we are working on electric mobility.
“Like any technological experiment, it will take time,” she added. “But it’s an important part, not just in rich countries.”
However, Thandile Chinyavanhu, Greenpeace energy activist in South Africa, said the phase-out of leaded gasoline shows that the world can “phase out all fossil fuels” and that African governments should not. “no more giving excuses to the fossil fuel industry”.
In the United States, Janet McCabe, deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the EPA is working with the Federal Aviation Administration to combat the continued use of leaded fuel in some aircraft operating in the country.
The aviation body said there are 167,000 piston engine planes in the country that use aviation fuel, or “avgas.” It is believed to be the only remaining transport fuel containing lead. This is to avoid severe “knocking” of the engine, which can lead to sudden engine failure. Through various initiatives, the industry was supposed to identify unleaded fuel by 2018, but the test completion date has been pushed back to 2021.
McCabe said, “There are no known safe levels of lead exposure, but we are pleased that work is continuing to test alternatives to aviation fuels in the United States, especially now that we have a. president who understands the value of fighting climate change. We must use the same power of collective effort to protect the most vulnerable among us. “
Andersen said efforts to ban other pollutants could face challenges similar to those that slowed the momentum of the Clean Fuels and Vehicles Partnership to end leaded gasoline, which included a skeptical transportation industry and unbudgeted capital costs for governments that had to recalibrate their refineries.
Andersen said, “For the lead, we had to face the myths. Some have said that older cars could not run well without leaded gasoline, that the engines would not run. Then you had governments that had to spend resources that they would rather not have spent on working in their refineries. “
Andersen said some companies have used underhand deals to derail efforts to stop sales. She cited a 2010 case in a London court in which directors of Innospec, a U.S. chemical company, pleaded guilty to bribing officials in Indonesia and Iraq to secure contracts to supply tetraethyl lead, the fuel additive which had by then been phased out in many countries. Reuters reported that the bribes in Indonesia were not only intended to secure sales but to “obstruct legislation in Jakarta to ban the substance.”
But Guterres said countries should be inspired to rally around the cause of removing environmental pollutants to “create a world of peace that works with nature, not against it.”
“We need international cooperation, compromise, solidarity – all guided by science,” said the secretary general.
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