The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: Following opposition from local communities, environmentalists and civil society groups, the World Bank has said that it will not invest in four waste-to-energy (WTE) incineration plants in Gujarat. Earlier, it had been considering granting $40 million to the Ahmedabad-based Abellon Clean Energy Limited for these plants that were proposed at Rajkot, Vadodara, Ahmedabad and Jamnagar in the state.
According to a press release by civil society group Alliance for Incinerator Free Gujarat on Wednesday (February 19), the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) – the private lending arm of the World Bank – confirmed to the NGO after it filed for an access to information request that it would not be investing in the WTE incineration plants in Gujarat.
The IFC had already delayed its decision on the projects twice, first in July 2024 and again in September of the same year. This delay and the recent decision to not fund the projects at all came after local communities, environmentalists and activists repeatedly engaged with the World Bank regarding the environmental and health impacts of the WTE incinerators.
Although the plants would together incinerate an estimated 3,750 tonnes of unsegregated municipal solid waste everyday, locals had raised concerns about the various pollutants the plants would emit.
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As per the press release, the local residents wrote a letter to the World Bank’s executive directors on June 26, 2024 about these concerns and also raised complaints with IFC’s stakeholder grievance response team and met the US treasury and presented the impacts of the project in July 2024.
In August, The Wire had reported that 174 civil society organisations including Break Free From Plastics and Delhi-based Centre for Financial Accountability also wrote to the World Bank’s board of directors to reject the loan for Abellon because of the project’s negative effects on communities, such as air and water pollution, health problems, climate impacts, and undermining sustainable waste management practices.
Highlighting that the plants would generate emissions of carbon dioxide as much as around 18,75,000 cars would, they demanded that the project be scrapped not only because it violated the IFC’s own performance standards but also several Indian laws.
“The diluted and flawed environment and social impact assessment by IFC for these toxic WTE incinerators that contribute to excessive pollution and are linked to fossil fuels indicates that IFC has not been compliant to its safeguards and also to the Paris Agreement,” Vaishnavi Varadarajan from the International Accountability Project had said then, in a press statement released by the coalition. See the full list of signatories on this letter to the World Bank here.
All these prompted the World Bank to back out of funding for these plants, and activists involved in the fight have welcomed the decision.
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Currently, a WTE incinerator operated by Abellon is operational at Jamnagar. However, locals say that it releases a lot of pollutants.
“We were initially informed that all garbage would be transformed into power, but after operations began, we observed that the plant emitted many pollutants. We filed complaints with the Gujarat pollution control board, the municipal commissioner, and the district collector, yet the communities continue to suffer,” said activist Ker Jayendrasinh, who has been supporting the local communities in Jamnagar, in a press release. “The IFC’s withdrawal from the project is an important victory for the locals harmed by the plant. Still, nothing short of a complete shutdown of the plant will bring relief to the affected communities,” he added.
Similarly, Jay Vyas, an activist in Vadodara who has been campaigning against WTE plants said, “It is good that [the] IFC has decided to back out from this project owing to the environmental, social, and health impacts of the projects.” “We must now turn our attention to investing in systemic transformations in the waste management sector which are less expensive yet more effective than WTE incineration, including restricting the production of single-use plastics, lower consumption, source segregation, and decentralised waste processing.”