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BROAD, global and dynamic |
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| Trade in hazardous wastes has become a global problem, and it demands global solutions. About a tenth of all the hazardous wastes generated around the world each year crosses national frontiers. A large proportion of this has gone, and is still going, from industrialized countries to developing ones, where disposal costs are lower.
Unfortunately many of these countries still lack environmentally sound management of waste disposal. Stockpiles of corrosive acids, organic chemicals, toxic metals and other wastes pose serious, acute and long-term health and ecological threats, causing groundwater contamination, leaching and other types of pollution. Frontline measures are urgently needed to cope with existing hazardous waste problems in developing countries. They will need to take action to minimize and manage the wastes, but their capabilities for setting standards, enforcing them, and monitoring what is happening are quite weak – and they are plagued by a scarcity of resources for sound hazardous waste management policies. Need for action The international community first began to recognize the need for urgent action on hazardous wastes in the early 1980s. Work began then, under UNEP’s auspices, to elaborate a global instrument on managing wastes in an environmentally sound way, on their movements across boundaries, and on their disposal. The resulting Basel Convention – which was adopted unanimously by 116 states meeting in the Swiss city in 1989, and which entered into force on 5 May 1992 – is the broadest and most significant international treaty on the transboundary movement and environmentally sound disposal of hazardous wastes: 117 states, plus the European Community, are now party to it. The Convention’s overall goal is to protect human health and the environment against the ill-effects of generating and handling hazardous and other wastes, and from moving them across boundaries. Other objectives include:
Notification and consent There is a strict control system, based on the procedure of prior written consent. Countries must be notified of shipments to them, and give their consent before they can take place. Both the notification and the consent must be in writing. The same goes for states that the waste will pass through in transit. Every person who takes charge of a movement of hazardous or other wastes across boundaries must sign an official document. And if a movement of hazardous wastes cannot be carried out in an environmentally sound way, the state exporting them has a duty to take them back. In 1994, the Parties to the Convention went further and decided to ban all cross-boundary movements of hazardous wastes from OECD countries destined for disposal in non-OECD ones, but this has not yet come into force. Trade in hazardous waste that does not comply with the terms of the Convention or its control system is illegal – and considered to be criminal. Parties are obliged to enact stringent national laws to prevent and punish it. The state exporting the waste is responsible for the actions of those who generate and export it, while the state that receives it is responsible for those of the importer and disposer. A state responsible for any action leading to an illegal movement must ensure its environmentally sound disposal, for example by sending it back to the exporting country, within 30 days of receiving information about it. If an otherwise legal movement cannot be carried out in accordance with the contractual agreement, the exporting state must take it back, unless alternative arrangements for environmentally sound disposal are agreed. Big profits, bigger costs The Convention cooperates with Interpol over illegal traffic. This trade is increasing, as it can yield big profits – at the cost of irreparably damaging the environment – and it tends to flow from developed to developing countries. But nobody knows exactly how big the problem is; though many cases of illegal traffic have been discovered, they are only a small proportion of those incidents that actually occur. There must be cooperation between countries to build up the capacity to tackle illegal traffic. United Nations regional commissions, and other regional bodies or conventions and protocols, should take an effective part in monitoring and preventing this. It is also important that customs officers and port authorities are adequately trained and able to take full control of the hazardous wastes being moved across frontiers. Parties are to cooperate in helping developing countries minimize the generation of hazardous wastes and their movement across frontiers. Measures can include ensuring that adequate disposal facilities are available, that managers are able to prevent pollution, and that, if pollution occurs, the consequences for human health and the environment can be kept to a minimum. Under the Convention international cooperation is to be extended to developing countries in:
The Convention also obligates its Parties to cooperate with a view to adopting a protocol setting out rules and procedures over liability and compensation for damage resulting from transboundary movements and the disposal of hazardous and other wastes. A collective force International environmental law is dynamic. The Basel Convention has developed as its Parties have adopted new decisions and amendments. It is developing into the legal international act that not only deals with controlling the movement of hazardous wastes across boundaries, but engages with the larger issue of their environmentally sound disposal, and involves technical assistance. It represents the intention of the international community to solve this global environmental problem collectively 
Iwona Rummel-Bulska is Chief, Enforcement and Compliance, Environmental Conventions Unit, UNEP. PHOTOGRAPH: Mark Edwards/Still Pictures |
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