NIDAN - Gates Foundation - Part 2 - Toxic Investments

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The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization, and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Chevron Corporation and Total of France, the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe.

This has led to respiratory problems, and other afflictions among the local population. Since the foundation spends billions of dollars to improve the health of Africans, that investment strategy would seem to conflict with its mission.

Hundreds of flares at oil plants in the Niger Delta have caused an epidemic of bronchitis in adults, asthma, and blurred vision in children. Many of the 250 toxic chemicals in the fumes and soot have long been linked to respiratory disease and cancer.

The oil plants in the region surrounding Ebocha, find it cheaper to burn nearly 1 billion cubic feet of gas each day than to sell it. They deny the flaring causes sickness. In developed nations, they would trap the gas and either re-inject it into the ground or capture it for sale. In Nigeria, where there isn’t a well-established market for natural gas, they just burn it off and get the oil out.

The fumes and the soot are so pervasive that farmers go several kilometers away from the oil plant in order to plant their crops, because otherwise they're covered with pollution, and therefore, they can't sell them in the marketplace.

The pollution from these plants, which is so pervasive throughout the countryside, not only causes respiratory problems, but also has the effect, according to health authorities in Nigeria, that these pollutants actually reduce immunity and make the children that are being vaccinated more susceptible to diseases like polio and measles than they otherwise would be.

Many of the parents of children in this area are reluctant to vaccinate children who are suffering from respiratory ailments. They feel that the vaccinations may further weaken their children.

Oil workers, and soldiers protecting them, are a magnet for prostitution, contributing to a surge in HIV and teenage pregnancy. Oil bore holes fill with stagnant water, which is ideal for mosquitoes that spread malaria. These are two problems the foundation is fighting.

An oil spill clogging rivers is a cause of cholera, another scourge the foundation is battling. The rivers became breeding grounds for all kinds of waterborne diseases.

The bright, sooty gas flares, which contain toxic byproducts such as benzene, mercury and chromium, lower immunity, and make children more susceptible to polio and measles, the diseases that the Gates Foundation has helped to inoculate them against.

A study published 2006 found serious respiratory problems throughout the region: More than half of children aged 2 to 5 had asthma, largely attributed to sulfur dioxide and other industrial pollutants. Much of it was produced by companies in which the Gates Foundation was invested.

By using their resources and prestige, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation could through their proxy and shareholder status make some real difference in corporate behavior.

For the environmental group Greenpeace, owning BP shares was a way to promote change from within. It helped sponsor a shareholders' resolution demanding BP to stop any activity to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

But a statement, posted on The Gates Foundation website, made clear that the foundation wasn't planning the type of changes some critics were calling for.

The statement said that evaluating one company over another based on social criteria would be too difficult, and the foundation would not embrace alternatives such as shareholder activism.