Icelandic Rain

Bad weather is not entirely unexpected in Iceland, but I still think I had bad luck during my brief stopover there. My first morning in Reykjavik was grey and chilly. It was as if the sun didn’t rise at all. At this latitude in the middle of the North Atlantic, 1^st of September spells autumn. I was up quite early and ventured outside right after breakfast. It was Sunday and the streets in the city centre were deserted. No wonder, as the parties had gone on until early morning. Although I hadn’t partaken in any party the night before, I had had my share of noise from the merrymakers. Every Saturday night in Reykjavik is like a carnival, I had heard and last night’s experience seemed to confirm this. The room in my hotel where I just had had breakfast, doubles as a microbrewery bar (one would think that in Iceland every brewery is a microbrewery and that distinction be somewhat redundant) from afternoon until the wee hours. I was impressed that they had managed to clean it up perfectly for the morning meal in the couple of hours in between.

Reykjavik is a rather small town but still it and its suburbs are home to two-thirds of the entire population of 305,000 in the country.  The centre of the city is compact and very friendly for walking. I headed down the pedestrian street past many shops and restaurants that all were closed at this hour. I observed the opera house—albeit small, Iceland has all aspects of social and cultural life covered—and headed further to the port. I only saw one person, a woman walking with an umbrella against the wind and slowly intensifying rain. They ocean was steel grey. A long row of leisure yachts bobbed in the waves against the backdrop of mist covered mountains. It was gloomy and I loved it.

As I only had this one day to explore, I had done what I normally would not consider: booked myself on a day trip with a bunch of other tourists. I and a few others were picked up by a minibus from the centre and delivered to a bus station a bit further out where we switched to a full-sized bus. This was the reverse procedure from yesterday when the airport bus left me at the same bus station to catch a minibus. The city centre streets are too narrow to accommodate big buses. There was a guide, a 51-year old man called Leidur, who would keep us entertained during the bus ride. The bus was almost full. It turned out, when Leidur took stock of his charges at the beginning of the trip, that more than half of the passengers were from Norway. This meant that Leidur’s running commentary would be delivered bilingually in English and Norwegian, both in the same angular Icelandic accent. It turned out that Leidur was not only knowledgeable, but also quite funny and refreshingly politically incorrect (or perhaps he’s just average in Iceland). As we were driving through the edge of the city he pointed out a modern building with four interconnected vertical towers each of different height. Leidur said that there had been much opposition to its building and the opponents called it the “world’s largest fuck-you sign.” I wasn’t sure what he had just said through the PA system, but could ascertain it when he repeated it in Norwegian.

The good road led eastward out of the town. At this point, the rain was getting heavier whipping against the windshield. Cars driving towards us emerged from the semidarkness with headlights blurred by the rain. The scenery was sparse and powerful. Volcanic rocks and old lava flows marked the landscape. As I had expected, there were grazing sheep, but I was surprised to see more horses. There are 80,000 horses in Iceland. Some are exported to Japan and Russia. Their meat is also widely eaten in Iceland. As the horses have evolved in isolation on this island, they are of a very distinct race. I am not sure how that translates into their taste.

There were few trees on the windswept plains. Only 5 percent of Iceland is under forest cover. This had not always been so. As described by Jared Diamond, professor of geography at UCLA who has studied society-environment relationships worldwide in a historical perspective, Iceland went through a very rough patch. The country’s first colonists came from Norway who apparently didn’t realize how fragile the ecology of the island actually was. They ended up destroying the topsoil and most of the forests. Although the forest cover still is very low, the Icelanders eventually adapted through adopting elaborate environmental protection measures to maintain agriculture under tough conditions. In his book Collapse, Diamond highlights Iceland as a success story from this point of view.

Leidur briefed us on older and relatively new history. During the heady days of financial speculation just two decades ago, Reykjavik was thriving and the city centre was flush with strip joints. Then that party ended and the strong feminist movement in Iceland saw an opportunity to ban the strip clubs. There is a long feminist tradition in the country—in fact, Iceland was amongst the first countries to give women the full voting rights in 1915—as well as a Christian heritage. The irony is that today 80% of Icelanders belong to the Lutheran religion, but 70% are descendants of the last Catholic bishop and his 11 children.

Our first stop was Geysir, a place where overheated water bubbles to the surface from the volcanic rock. At this juncture, I had to accept that I would be wet. I had on a windbreaker that would keep me relatively shielded, but the rain was heavy by now and the wind blew it sideways. My jeans were soaked in no time. But I had no choice. Having come this far, I wouldn’t let a bit of a North Atlantic storm to keep me inside. Furthermore, this whole geothermal business is so important for the country that it was necessary to see the source of it with my own eyes. Some 90 percent of houses in Iceland—and every house in Reykjavik—are heated with geothermal energy. Piped water comes straight from the clean waters underground and therefore hot water has a light but distinct odour of sulphur.

So I set out to walk towards Strokkur, the most active of the geysers, which spouts a formidable burst of scalding water some 30 metres up into the air every 10-12 minutes releasing the pressure that builds up with water vapour underground. Both sides of the walking path were pitted with holes filled with hot water (it would only take minutes to cook a tourist, Leidur had warned us). The soil and rocks were coloured red and yellow by the iron, sulphur and other minerals oozing from the earth. The landscape had an exquisite melancholy beauty, which I felt the rain accentuated. Fog in the hills mingled with the steam arising from the hot springs. Geysir (which has given English language the word geyser) is a hot spring area that has been active for some 10,000 years, but its activity levels have varied greatly.

After the walk, I relented and headed to the visitor centre, which luckily hosted two bars. I ordered a beer and Icelandic schnapps, which is known as brennivin. As Leidur had said earlier, Iceland has an alcohol policy, which is “extra Norwegian” in its severity, another expression of the Lutheran legacy. Today it really doesn’t limit the availability or consumption of booze, but translates into high prices. Until recently, however, beer was not allowed to be sold in the country on the perverse assumption that it would be so easy to drink that people would be drunk all the time. I remember in the late-1980s when I was a research fellow at the Nordic Africa Institute in Sweden, we would get visiting researchers from Iceland and the first thing they’d do was to rush to the closest bar for a beer. The law was only changed in1989. It was seen to be futile, as bars in Reykjavik had taken to selling alcohol-free beer with brennivin dropped in.

 

Back on the bus, Leidur told us a story about a country priest who had found a dead pig on the road. Not knowing what to do with it, he called the police from the first automated phone in the country. The officer at the other end quipped: “you’re the priest; aren’t you supposed to bury the dead?” “Certainly, but I always inform the next of kin first,” replied the priest. This was in the mid-1970s. There had been a lot of public opposition to the introduction of automated phones, as that prevented neighbours from listening into telephone conversations.

The following stop was at Gullfoss, a fabulous waterfall, the highest in Iceland. The rain was still coming down in torrential bursts. I was wet and cold, but decided again to take the walk to the waterfall, which definitely was worth it. Gullfoss has two waterfalls with a combined height of 31 metres. The gorge in which it is located is 2.5 km long. The waterfall and the deep gorge below were formed at the end of the last Ice Age when great glacial floods cut through cracks in the volcanic basalt lava layers on top of softer sedimentary rock. Today the average water flow through the cascade is 109 cubic metres per second, but at times it can go up to 2,000 cubic metres per second. I am sure that on this stormy day the flow was well above average.

Luckily there was time for another beer and brennivin combo before with again gathered in the bus. The bext and final stop on our round trip would be Thingvellir, designated a UNESCO world heritage site due to its geologic, historic and cultural significance. This is where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge forms a rift valley that is constantly spreading. The formation is quite remarkable. The view from the top of the crest to the surrounding area is gorgeous. Historically, Thingvellir became the site of the first parliament founded in the year 930. It remained the location of the parliament until 1798. The area also became a central cultural place where people from all over Iceland would gather in the historical times. There would be traders and craftsmen and, natural, it would become fairgrounds where drinks were served and games held.

By the time we returned to Reykjavik in early evening I was feeling quite fine. It was warm in the bus and the brennivin was adding to my mellow mood. Back at the hotel, a hot shower with the sulphur-infused water and change into a fresh set of dry cloths got me ready to roll again. By this time the rain had stopped and the temperature was a comfortable 10 degrees Celsius above freezing. I took a stroll around the centre of the city—still quiet but not a ghost town as in the morning—and picked at random a pleasant looking casual restaurant from amongst the many tempting places. A genuinely friendly and attractive young waitress led me to a window table with a view over the rapidly darkening square where a few people were crossing once in a while. I ordered lox as my starter and lamb with herbs for the main course, pairing them with nice white and red wines respectively. It was rather heavenly to sit in the warm and welcoming place, enjoying a superb meal after a wet but interesting day in the stunningly beautiful country. I rounded off the evening with a nightcap in a pub with a live band. Finally, I also found Icelanders who had crept out of their Sunday slumber and wandered out to quench the thirst caused by the previous night’s partying.

In the morning, I slept like a baby in the silent darkness when it was time to get up. I had to catch the 5 am bus to the airport. The driver, a blond young woman, quickly headed out of town onto the straight highway leading west to Keflavik. I relaxed to the monotonous roar of the bus and reflected on my short but pleasant stay in this unique country. I am from the north, so I’m used to darkness and rain. In fact, I find certain solace in them. A few years back, Eric Weiner in his his quest for the happiest places on earth that he describes in the book The Geography of Bliss visited Iceland. At the end of his day, he observed that melancholia and happiness are not mutually exclusive or opposites in any way. I have always known this.

Finally, the lights of Keflavik came into view like a bright twinkling string floating above the still dark horizon. What a lovely sight.

Importance of National Evaluation Capacity

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Minamata - from mercury victim to savior

In January 2013, governments agreed to a legally binding global instrument to govern mercury use. The Minamata Convention on Mercury was born after a four-year period of negotiation. Almost 30 national governments from the North and the South have provided financial support to the establishment and implementation of the Convention. The Government of Japan—alongside Norway, Switzerland, USA, Uruguay, and the Nordic Council of Ministers and the European Union—is one of the big sponsors of the Convention that bears the name of a small fishing village in Japan that came to be synonymous to environmental pollution. Japan has come a long way from the days when Minamata pitted the national and local government against the victims of Minamata disease and their advocates, becoming a highly divisive issue in the island nation.

Minamata is close to my heart for many reasons. It touches upon concerns that are central to me, namely ecosystem health and trampling on local people’s rights by big business and authoritative government. In brief, the history of the Minamata pollution case is as follows. In 1956, four patients with severe but undiagnosed symptoms were brought to the Minamata City Hospital on the southwestern Japanese island of Kyushu. All had similar symptoms, including severe convulsions, high fever and intermittent loss of consciousness, before they lapsed into coma and died. As this disease was undiagnosed, a local doctor, Dr. Hajime Hosokawa, started investigations into the cases and engaged local health centers in an epidemiological study. He found that in the nearby fishing villages altogether 17 other people had died of similar attacks. There were also reports of local cats succumbing to the ailment following uncontrolled convulsions.

What all of the victims had in common was that they all had consumed large amounts of fish and seafood from the Minamata bay. The epidemiologists soon honed in on environmental pollution as the cause of the disease. Studies found that the sludge from the bay contained high concentrations of various industrial chemicals, so the researchers contacted Chisso, a chemical company that had its plant in Minamata. From the very beginning, Chisso was uncooperative and refused to release any information to the researchers. It was clear, however, that for many years Chisso had released its untreated wastewater directly into Minamata bay. Similarly, Kumamoto University engineering department that had collaborated with Chisso stonewalled the medical researchers. When the medical team released its findings that showed that the probable cause for the disease and deaths was heavy metal poisoning, Chisso produced its own report that disputed these findings.

Finally, the medical team was able to conclude that the culprit beyond any doubt was methyl mercury that the chemical plant had discharged into the bay. There were massive concentrations of mercury in the sludge from the bay, as well as in the fish and the people who had died from eating it. The epidemiological study was able to produce a conclusive map showing one-to-one distribution of the poisoned fish and the occurrence of the disease. The company had kept its use of mercury in the plant as an industrial secret. Chisso continued its own studies but in 1959 was forced to conclude tentatively that mercury was, indeed, the likely cause of Minamata disease.

Case closed, one would think. Far from it, as it turned out. Chisso was the main source of income for the remote region that had suffered greatly in the Pacific War. Following the war, Japan adopted a self-sacrificing strategy to rebuild at a frantic pace and at any cost catch up with the West. General Douglas MacArthur ruled in an imperious way in Tokyo as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers occupying Japan promoting American values and morals. It had been decided not to punish many of the militarists from wartime Japan, especially the wealthy industrialists who had supported Japan’s military ventures, so as to support quick economic development. Japan would be formed into a Western-oriented bulwark against the communists in China, Russia and North Korea (MacArthur was later relieved of his duties as the commander of the American forces in the Korean War by President Truman, partly because of the former’s suggestion to use the atomic bomb against the communist targets). The Japanese wholeheartedly agreed: democracy should not come in the way of this project. People’s rights and the natural environment were secondary considerations to be sacrificed for economic growth.

Consequently, Chisso’s success was to be protected. Although the link between its waste disposal and the increasingly widespread Minamata disease causing the death of numerous people was undisputed, the plant continued to release mercury into the bay until 1968. The community in and around Minamata was conflicted. Many people depended on the industry for their livelihood and the victims tended to be poor fisherman families from the coast. The fact that the terribly painful disease caused physical and mental symptoms, such as grotesque convulsions and lapses into crazed mental states, further contributed to the fact that many of those not affected considered the victims freaks who should not be allowed to derail progress.

An American photographer Eugene Smith documented the suffering of the victims in powerful photographs, which touched me deeply. In 1972 he was physically attacked by Chisso employees trying to stop him from publicizing the case to the outside world. Chisso throughout refused to negotiate directly with the victims and insisted on third party mediation by the local and national governments. These clearly sided with the company to ward off any lawsuits that were being put forward by the victims and their advocates.

Funding was cut from research teams working on the Minamata disease. Academics, such as Jun Ui, who conducted research around the issue from a social science point of view were ostracized by the establishment. A brilliant writer and a conscientious researcher, Prof. Ui was unable to secure tenure in Tokyo or anywhere in mainland Japan and finally ended up in the University of Okinawa in the Ryukyu archipelago halfway towards Taiwan.

In 1990 I moved to Japan and only a few months later became involved in the Minamata case. I was working with the United Nations University in Tokyo as coordinator of environmental research when we were approached by officials from the Kumamoto prefectural government where Minamata is located asking our cooperation to turn Minamata’s reputation from an environmental disaster to an environmental model. The then vice-rector Prof. Roland Fuchs and I traveled to Kumamoto and Minamata to learn about the plans. This was still a time when legal cases from the pollution events in the 1950s and 1960s were lingering in the courts unresolved, but the local government had decided to move on. True to Japanese approach to things, technology and engineering were to be the solutions. The entire bottom of the semi-enclosed Minamata bay had been dredged and the polluted sludge had been sealed off by a plastic sheet, which then was covered by clean soil. The opening of the bay to the ocean was blocked by a net, which would prevent fish from crossing and spreading pollution. A bamboo forest was being created to symbolize harmony with the nature. Our local government hosts, Mr. Tanaka, a serious young man, and his boss, more animated Mr. Kamakura, were very proud of the work being undertaken—and rightly so.

It struck me how beautiful the natural landscape in Minamata was. There were no major signs of environmental pollution and the industry didn’t dominate the scenery. We flew in through the southern city of Kagoshima, over the active volcano Sakurajima that was sending up plumes of white smoke even as we landed; then drove up the western coast of Kyushu on a road between forested mountains and the sea. Minamata itself was a quiet and peaceful town by the secluded bay. It was easy to see why the pollution had had so drastic impacts in the area, as the bay was really self-contained and the outlet to the wider ocean quite narrow. I remember taking morning walks on this and several later visits in the years to come around a small island just off the coast connected by a narrow causeway and enjoying the complete peacefulness. Of course, a partial cause of the peacefulness was that the area had been somewhat depopulated as a consequence of the disaster and the later decline of Chisso.

The government had built a multipurpose hall with hotel facilities on the site. The modern complex was complete with a karaoke bar with beautiful hostesses imported from the Philippines. We visited the National Minamata Disease Research Institute that had been established in the vicinity. As the facts were still being obscured and the government insisted on such low numbers of proven victims from the pollution that they seemed highly improbable to us, we asked the doctor in charge of the research institute what he thought were the real numbers. “Virtually everyone living in this region was affected to a smaller or a larger degree,” he responded with a convulsive tick to his eye.

We agreed to cooperate with the local government in organizing an international conference in the new hall in Minamata, provided that we would be fully in charge of selecting the international speakers and that they would have complete academic freedom to speak about the issues. This was agreed to and we were hosted to a fabulous seafood dinner in a traditional inn by the mayor of Minamata City. Given that mercury and other heavy metals don’t just disappear from the nature in a few years or decades, I remember observing with Roland whether our meal would glow suspiciously in the semi-darkness of the dining room.

The conference on ‘Industry, the environment and human health’ was held in November 1991. The two-day meeting featured keynote speeches by experts on global mercury pollution, Dr. Jerome Nriagu of Environment Canada and Prof. Phillippe Grandjean of Odense University in Denmark. There was a session focusing on the Minamata case with leading Japanese researchers, including Dr. Masazumi Harada of Kumamoto University, and the second day was largely dedicated to exploring similar problems from other parts of the world. One of the speakers was Prof. Geraldo de Assis Guimarães who had studied the impacts of widespread mercury use in gold extraction in the Amazon region. Prof. Guimarães was a warm somewhat pudgy man, speaking from his heart about the subject he had dedicated his life to. His English was good but spoken with a strong Brazilian accent and we came to appreciate his favorite phrase: “This is very important!”

Although it was a scientific conference, the event attracted a large audience of around 1,000 people, mostly local inhabitants, and was covered widely by the media, including several Japanese TV stations, demonstrating the interest that Minamata disease continued to raise. It was heartening to meet with the local people and to witness their dedication to environmental issues. The international participants were also taken to visits to the National Minamata Disease Research Institute, the Meisuien rehabilitation institute for the victims, and even to Chisso Corporation, which now was collaborating in the environmental rehabilitation, while still resisting any responsibility for the original cause.

The conference was a great success and it was celebrated with a lavish party held in a fabulous garden restaurant on a hill overlooking Minamata bay. Kamakura-san was ecstatic, gulping sake and dancing the night away with anyone who wanted to join or by himself if needed. When the exclusive fireworks started from a barge on the bay, Prof. Guimarães approached me with a glass in hand. “This is very important,” he intoned with a broad smile.

The scientific advisor to the conference, Richard Carpenter emphasized the necessity of risk assessment. Although the engineering works in the bay appeared solid, it would still be important to monitor the condition and the effectiveness of the sheet in place to contain the polluted sludge. The government representatives wanted to downplay this aspect and objected to including the recommendation into the report of the conference, so that it would not alarm the citizens and draw attention to a possible risk in the perfect rehabilitation plan. Although the event was fully financed by the authorities, we invoked our agreement regarding academic freedom and included the damning segment in the report. For a while it strained our relationship, but it was soon mended and we had the pleasure of cooperating with Kamakura and Tanaka on a second Minamata environmental conference already the following year.

The Minamata case continued to be fought in the courts. The judiciary branch in Japan doesn’t enjoy quite the same extent of independence as in the West and it was obvious that the plaintiffs were facing an uphill struggle, despite an initial victory in a first suit for compensation in 1967. The legal cases lingered for many long years as a consequence of deliberate delaying tactics. It was only in July 1994 when the Osaka District Court finally decided on a suit filed by 59 plaintiffs in 1982 ordering Chisso to pay rather low compensation (¥3-8 million—or about US$30,000-80,000—per surviving victim), while entirely exonerating the national and Kumamoto prefectural governments from any responsibility. By the time of the verdict, 16 of the plaintiffs had already died. In the following year, 1995, there was a mediated settlement reached between the main group of some 2,000 Minamata disease victims and the government.

So it is more than comforting that a new global Convention on Mercury is named after Minamata and strongly backed by the Japanese government. The Convention will open for signature by governments in Minamata in the coming October. In the meantime, the governments negotiating the Convention selected the Global Environment Facility to serve as the key element of the financial mechanism of the treaty. This is another personal connecting point, as when I left the UN University in 1999, I joined the GEF in its monitoring and evaluation unit in Washington, DC. As it happened, Roland Fuchs was also living in the national capital region by then and we could continue our interactions there. But that’s another story.