Ahead of next week’s Montreal Protocolassembly meeting in Paris, France, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has released a briefing document highlighting the new global trend in refrigerant smuggling,

The brief ‘New Trends in ODS Smuggling’ highlights the growing threat of illegal trade in ozone depleting substances (ODS), and provides analysis of trade and emissions data, recent reported seizures in Spain, Russia, India, China and the Phillippines, and looks at the global refrigerant and feedstock market to highlight some key areas of concern that they say need to be addressed by the assembly.

Trade data analysis included within the brief highlights significant discrepancies between China’s reported HCFC-22 refrigerant exports to various countries and reported imports from China.

Senior Climate Campaigner Fionnuala Walravens said: “While there are several possible explanations for this, EIA is concerned that HCFC-22 exports from China are being mis-declared as other non-ODS alternatives upon import.

“Environmental protection departments and customs should be monitoring trade in HFCs very closely and be aware of the increasing evidence that ODS are often mis-declared as HFCs.”

Evidence from recent seizures says that ODSare often declared as refrigerant HFC-134a, not currently under the control of the Montreal Protocol.

Another area of concern raised by the EIA is the potentially huge illegal trade in ODS shipped in large ISO tanks. EIA research suggests that despite more than half of all global refrigerant shipments being made in large tanks, verification of the contents of theseshipments is woefully inadequate.

Fionnuala Walravens, said “There appears tobe a lack of understanding as to how the contents of large tanks can beverified and as a result those checks are not happening.”

EIA campaigners will be attending theMontreal Protocol meeting in Parisfrom November 17-21.

The briefing:New Trends in ODS Smuggling.pdf

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