Holes in new ozone decision

Forest and Bird, Issue 267, 1 February 1993, Page 7

Holes in new ozone decision

IN THE aftermath of the largest Antarctic ozone hole on record, the meeting of the world’s environment ministers in Copenhagen last November tightened the deadlines for the phasing out of ozone depleting substances. They refused, however, to take decisive action against new threats to the ozone layer. The Montreal Protocol signatories brought forward the phase-out date of CFCs and carbon tetrachloride by four years to 1996, and halons by six years to 1994, HCFCs, touted as CFC substitutes until their own considerable ozone depletion potential was realised, have now been brought into the Montreal protocol but, disappointingly, will not be phased out till 2030. While these changes passed with little debate, there was wrangling over the "new" threat of methyl bromide. Production of this fumigant increased 50 percent from 1984 to 1990 due to the growing international trade in fruit and vegetables, and it is now thought to be responsible for up to ten percent of the ozone destroyed to date. Scientific meetings preparatory to Copenhagen concluded that most uses of methyl bromide could be replaced with other chemical fumigants within this decade. However, major fruit exporters such as Israel, Brazil, Spain, Greece and Italy, which depend on methyl bromide as a cheap pest control, refused to accept any cutbacks in use and the only agreement was to freeze production and consumption (apart from quarantine uses) at 1991 levels from 1995.