Rwanda has implemented a long-delayed ban on the import and use of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases that damage the ozone layer.
The Rwanda Environmental Management Authority (Rema) began implementing a ban on the gases recently, although the legislation was originally drafted in 1995. “There were many other priorities on which we had to put emphasis in environmental protection policy in Rwanda,” says Rema director Rose Mukankomeje.
She told SciDev.Net that the country hopes to eliminate the use of CFC gases by 2010, meeting the requirements of the Montreal Protocol — an international agreement started in 1987 that aims to phase out ozone-depleting substances. The delay in enforcing the 1995 legislation has allowed CFCs to continue being used in Rwanda, despite it technically being against the law. Mukankomeje says such “illegal” use around the globe could threaten international efforts to reduce their use.
Boubié Jérémy Bazye, of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Regional Office for Africa, warns that illegal use of ozone-depleting substances has the potential to undo all gains over the past 20 years. “Even though most countries have now enacted regulations, enforcement is not effective in many countries. I believe this is due to the fact that the depletion of the ozone layer is not a major concern to policymakers.”
Bazye oversees the African Ozone Officers Network that monitors compliance with the Montreal Protocol. Representatives from more than 50 African countries in the network met this month in Libreville, Gabon, to analyse progress and assess the capacity of countries to meet the 2010 target.
Kenya ratified the original 1987 Montreal Protocol a decade ago but only implemented regulations on ozone-depleting substances last year.
According to the Business Daily newspaper, Kenya plans a blanket ban on all ozone-depleting substances by 2040, although the country’s horticulture industry has already stopped using many ozone-depleting gases to conform to European Union standards for flower imports.
Malawi is one of the first African countries to phase out ozone-depleting substances and the first in the Southern African Development Community. Between 2003 and 2005 the Agricultural Research and Extension Trust in Lilongwe trained customs officials and other law enforcement agents on how to recognise and impound CFC chemicals. Tobacco farmers in Malawi, who used 85% of the methyl bromide imported into the country to fumigate seedlings and protect them against soil worms, were trained in alternative methods in the first ozone ban.
Aimable Twahirwa, Charles Mkoka and Christina Scott are members of the transborder project in the science journalism cooperation mentoring programme run by the World Federation of Science Journalists