About
The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal is the most comprehensive global environmental agreement on hazardous and other wastes. It has 170 Parties and aims to protect human health and the environment against the adverse effects resulting from the generation, management, transboundary movements and disposal of hazardous and other wastes. It came into force in 1992.
The Basel Convention has two pillars; first, it regulates the transboundary movements of hazardous and other wastes. Second, the Convention obliges its Parties to ensure that such wastes are managed and disposed of in an environmentally sound manner (ESM). To this end, Parties are expected to minimize the quantities that are moved across borders, to treat and dispose of wastes as close as possible to their place of generation and to prevent or minimize the generation of wastes at source. Strong controls have to be applied from the generation of a hazardous waste to its storage, transport, treatment, reuse, recycling, recovery and final disposal.
The Basel Convention has 14 Regional and Coordinating Centres, with one or more operating on every continent. The Centres develop and undertake regional projects, and deliver training and technology transfer for the implementation of the Convention under the direction of the Conference of the Parties and of the Secretariat of the Convention. Recent years have seen efforts under the Basel Convention to develop a global strategy for environmentally sound waste management. This included support to the launch of the Mobile Phone Partnership Initiative, hopefully the first of several Strategic Partnerships in different areas of waste management.
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Strategy
The Secretariat of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal has taken significant steps to move towards climate neutrality in 2008, and was the first institution adhering to the UN Climate Neutral Initiative[1] to have purchased offsets to balance its carbon emissions.
The carbon footprint generated by the official travel of Secretariat staff was significantly mitigated through two means: by reducing the regular budget for staff travel by about 7% and by investing the financial savings in the purchase of offsets generated from the Clean Development Mechanism, through the procurement service of the United Nations Office in Geneva.
Knowledge and experience gained through meetings to move the UN towards Climate-Neutrality convinced Katharina Kummer Peiry, the Executive Secretary of the Basel Convention, of the need to act swiftly. Data showed that 87% of the total greenhouse gas emissions of UNEP in 2007 were caused by travel of staff and delegates to official meetings. As the core travel needs of the Basel Convention Secretariat could only be slightly reduced, the remaining emissions would need to be “neutralized” through the purchase of offsets.
Like other organizations which are part of the UN Climate Neutral Initiative, the Secretariat of the Basel Convention is developing its inventory of greenhouse gas emissions for 2008 and intends to further develop its plan towards climate neutrality by extending its climate-neutral policy to all travel processed through its administration and also by developing specific policies on the procurement of services. The Secretariat of the Basel Convention is also significantly reducing its printing outputs and distribution activities while favoring online solutions.
In its endeavor to move towards climate neutrality the Secretariat of the Basel Convention was assisted by the Secretariat of the Environment Management Group hosted by UNEP: “The Secretariat of the Basel Convention would have not have been able to achieve this result in such a short time without the valuable help of the Secretariat of the Environment Management Group” said Ms. Kummer Peiry.
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