by Pauline ETIENNE

A wave of protests has been raised by the prospect of building a waste incinerator in La Chaumière for several weeks. Despite the precautions given by the company wishing to launch the project, Gamma Energy, and the several guarantees given that the incinerator will cause no damage to the people?s health, inhabitants of the towns and villages surrounding La Chaumière are turning a deaf ear. They assert that the project involves some risks linked to air pollution despite the company?s reassurances, which the latter base on the experience of their partner, Covanta, in other countries. Although we are not in a position to judge whether the incinerator indeed includes risks, we are just happy that Mauritians are starting to show some reactions on issues related to the environment. We had thought that the great majority of local citizens just did not care about their environment. My feeling was that only a small minority really cared for it while others only seized the opportunity of a problem to turn it into a political issue. But this time, I felt like a beginning of an awareness of people on environmental issues...

But this was before poachers had the wonderful idea of using toxic substance to fish in Moka River. All my hopes of a greener ? hence safer ? Mauritius would have vanished away if there had been no mobilisation of inhabitants of the neighbourhood. Fortunately enough, these people have taken immediate action by making a statement to the police when they saw the dead fish floating in the river.

These inhabitants may actually have taken this decision because they like this river and enjoy living next to a nice ecologic ?site? but they must have felt especially concerned by the problem simply because they sometimes eat fish from this river. The toxic products used by the poachers would thus constitute a health hazard for their families.

The same lesson could actually be drawn by both experiences. People feel concerned by environmental issues especially when they feel the latter could have direct negative effects on them. In the case of La Chaumière, for instance, the fear is that emanations coming from the incinerator when waste is burnt contain toxic products for human health ? the most feared being dioxin.

If citizens are able to react on environmental issues when they feel directly concerned, I am led to believe that they are not concerned by more global issues like warming up and the gradual phasing out of the ozone layer. I can only suppose that this is why many of us do not hesitate to throw waste through the car window or would not bother to make an effort to reduce our consumption of plastic bags if the government had not taken the decision to charge consumers for their use in supermarkets.

But I suppose this is also due to a lack of communication from the ministry of the Environment, which has made no real effort to educate people about the long-term effects of what could appear as ?insignificant daily pollution?. Minister Bachoo was appointed more than two years ago but he is one of those in cabinet who are the least visible to the public. Nicolas Sarkozy announced, hardly one hour after being elected at the head of France, that his main priority would be environmental issues? He must have a good reason for making such a choice!