Kapok: Not so fantastic anymore

One of my fellow columnists with the Times has made the fight against the abusive usage of plastic an all-out effort, very often taking a very personal tone. Contrary to the French song [I originally and mistakenly wrote Belgium...], plastic is not that fantastic anymore and we should actually be considering totally banning it from our life. If Plastic Free July is such a great initiative, it is so not only because it strikingly demonstrates that we can “easily” do without the convenience of organic polymers — cheap, malleable and resistant, and yet awfully and irremediably polluting — but that recycling is not enough and what needs to change is our social and economic behavior at large.

In a ground-breaking study published in Sciences Advances in July 2017, a group of researchers was able to estimate that humanity had produced some 6,3 billion metric tons of plastic waste since 1950, and that only 9% of these had effectively been recycled, 12% incinerated, and no less than a staggering 79% accumulated in landfills or the natural environment. By 2025, the cumulative recycling rate should amount to 20%, and projecting the current global waste management trends, even though we will be able to recycle some 44% of our plastic waste by 2050, by then we will have also accumulated some 12 billion metric tons of discarded plastic waste scattered in the midst of mother nature!

The image of a straw stuck in the nose of a turtle might provide a terrific imagination grabber targeted at five-year-olds and their hurried parents — our era oscillates between the empathy for the cute and the indifference to barbarity — but as a more politicized journalist recently remarked: “Coca Cola produces on its own some 128 billion plastic bottles per year! When put one on top of the other, these bottles amount to one hundred times the distance from the Earth to the Moon…” Even though some countries are doing better than others — Norway already recycles 43.4% of its plastic waste — it is indisputable that the ability to recycle everything we manufacture is everything but a chimeric dream. Sorry for all the new evangelists of circular economy, but the future lies in reducing the amount of filth we are dropping on the green planet!

I was thus very proud when on October 2 the French National Assembly approved the law banning single-usage plastic “cutlery, meat picks, box covers, trays, ice-cream pots, salad cups, boxes and stirrers” by January 1 2020. This list complements the cotton sticks and single usage plastic glasses, cups and plates which were already destined to be axed by that date. Fifty micron thick plastic bags had already been removed from cashiers as well as fruits and vegetables stalls respectively in 2016 and 2017. But then, France only recycles 22.2% of its plastic waste and one could argue that being an advanced economy, it had had plenty of time to pollute without really caring.

However, I just came back from India, and guess what? Twenty-five out the country’s twenty-nine states have already put in place various bans on the manufacture, supply, storage and use of plastics! India’s Environment Minister has already announced that by 2022, his country would “eliminate all single use plastics.” In Mumbai, 225 municipal civil servants dressed in purple have been tracking offenders to the law since June 2018, and if this does not sound almighty in a city of 21 million dwellers, those confronted to fines ranging from Rs5,000 (half a median monthly salary) to Rs25,000 for recidivists seem to be taking the scheme seriously, be them manufacturers, distributors or consumers. In Goa, the manufacturing of 50 micron and thinner plastic bags has actually been prohibited by law since 2016, and even political parties have been made responsible for managing the waste generated by their campaign activities! 

In Macao, civic groups are mobilizing and taking stock of the filthy wasteful habits registered in the SAR, but why would the territory be left to the goodwill of a few casinos, even with the best of intentions? Is a gold-plated plastic landfill our only horizon?

Published in Macau Daily Times on October 5 2018

Kapok: The variable geometry of the "one country"

The fact that Macao immigration has been barring some Hong Kong residents from entering the territory of the Macao SAR is widely acknowledged and documented. It is neither a daily occurrence, nor an open secret, but the very fact that it has become duly admitted and vindicated by the Macao authorities, including Secretary for Security Wong Sio Chak, testifies to a worrying trend in which a discretionary power has transformed into an accepted norm and a routine practice.

Suffice it to say that it is “in accordance with the law” for the audience to accept it matter-of-factly as if for a high official to invoke the law and the compliance with that law were good enough to ease all doubts and worries. This is exactly what happened with the rejection of Hong Kong legislator Kwok Ka Ki on July 15th on the grounds that he was a “threat to stability” (威脅穩定). As Mr Kwok is strongly contesting the decision, Secretary Wong has been mildly challenged by (too few) local media and has been arguing that this kind of decision was indeed absolutely in line with existing laws regarding the security of the territory — which ones, no one really knows — and that it was not unique to the SAR but that many other jurisdictions — he reportedly quoted the examples of Portugal and the European Union — have similar legal provisions.

Mr Kwok was well aware that such a practice existed in Macao — and even the other way round as the recent Scott Chiang case proves — and he is now arguing that he never participated in any politically-related activity in the second SAR, merely visiting for holidays as this was the case that day when he was supposed to celebrate his 30th wedding anniversary together with his wife. He has now lodged a complaint with Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam and has sent a similar letter to the Macao Chief Executive, Fernando Chui, asking for the justification for his entry refusal.

There was a time when such rebuttals would create a stir. That was especially true in March 2009 when then-Dean of Law from the University of Hong Kong Johannes Chan was prevented from entering Macao over the same motives. This caused an embarrassment for both the Macao government and the inviting party, the University of Macao, as Professor Chan was supposed to be in the SAR for just a few hours to deliver a short lecture on the right to a fair trial — a purely academic endeavour. But that was a few days after the passage of the Article 23 national security law in our SAR, and yet it led not only to a public outcry — including, quite ironically, a vibrant declaration by former Hong Kong Secretary for Security Regina Ip that this was “tightening the freedom” of Hong Kong residents — but also to an informal discussion in Beijing between then-Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang and his Macao counterpart, Edmund Ho. Only Stanley Ho at the time had the bad taste of justifying the unjustifiable in coarse language.

What is truly problematic is that these “stability concerns” appear to be much more politically motivated than security-prompted, then and now. In that respect, the practice reminds us of the disgraceful 1952 McCarran-Walter Act that allowed for many Nobel Prizes to be barred from entering the United States based on individual beliefs only — an act that was repealed in 1990 with the revision of the American immigration law. Are ideas and beliefs being treated the same as the likelihood of committing acts of espionage, sabotage or other dangerous unlawful activities in Macao?

And then a few other questions remain. Is the nature of the relationship between Hong Kong and Macao the same as one between two autonomous nation-states? How come residents from the same country but coming from separate entities can be considered as “foreign”? And if this is a marker of the “high degree of autonomy”, why is it so different when it comes to other political and institutional matters?

Published in Macau Daily Times on July 21, 2017