How your taxes fund jobs for the WHO’s chums
Our attention was drawn to a rather unusual expert group convened to provide recommendations for COP agenda item 4.3 concerning “Protection of the environment and the health of persons.”
We were eager to learn more about the personnel involved in this expert group. They are named in the supplementary “Regulatory options” report which is located in the Supplementary documents area on the COP11 website. We found that 25 individuals were involved in producing the document, either as authors, contributors or external reviewers.
Those producing such a comprehensive report on environmental matters for a global health authority such as the WHO must surely be a who’s who of prominent environmental researchers. A veritable stellar list of big name heavy-hitters.
It was disappointing, then, to discover that out of the 25 names, only two had ever published a research paper on environmental matters. Out of the three research items they have produced between them, one focused on “Neanderthal environments in Portugal” and another was a master’s thesis on “exposure to benzene in industrial cities.”
Not one of the eight external reviewers has any environmental science credentials whatsoever, nor have eight of the authors and contributors. And none are listed as specialists in ecotoxicology, waste-management engineering, life-cycle assessment, marine pollution, or environmental chemistry. The disciplines normally required for the report’s subject matter.
In fact, the expert group is dominated by tobacco-control and legal advocates, not environmental scientists, so it is a misnomer to call it an “expert” group at all.
But perhaps it doesn’t matter. Far from being a serious academic attempt to align tobacco control with the environmental movement, the report just reverts to traditional tobacco control rhetoric about prohibitive measures such as banning cigarette filters and disposable vapes, outdoor smoking bans, and reducing the number of shops selling tobacco and nicotine products.
Regular readers will know that expert group members are selected by the Convention Secretariat rather than chosen by national governments, so mostly comprise NGO activists sympathetic to the Secretariat’s ideology (Working groups, by contrast, are much more democratic as they are selected by national governments – funnily enough, there appear to be no current working groups at FCTC COP).
It is no surprise, therefore, that no one in this group is talking about scientific evidence, the incidence of trade-offs, or considering unintended outcomes, and there’s certainly no effort to connect their ideas to any coherent environmental or waste policy.
It seems that if you are “in” with the WHO, you are eligible for “jobs for the boys” in any expert group, no matter how non-existent your policy expertise actually is.