ENVIRONMENT: Ban on toxic waste exports to poor countries to be challenged

By Pratap Chatterjee Reprint | | Print |

Pratap Chatterjee

WASHINGTON, Mar 14 1995 (IPS) - A meeting this week in Dakar, Senegal, to discuss a ban on the export of toxic waste to poor countries is a disguised attempt by some rich countries to destroy the ban, say Greenpeace activists.

Beginning Wednesday, the Senegalese government will host a three-day meeting to discuss the ban which was decreed last March by the signatories of the Basel Convention on Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Waste.

They agreed that the disposal of waste originating from the wealthy member states of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in non-OECD countries should be banned with immediate effect. They also agreed that OECD waste intended for recycling should be phased out by the beginning of 1998.

The Dakar meeting has been paid for by Australia, Canada, France and the United States, as well as the International Chamber of Commerce, a private organisation. All of them actively opposed the decision last March.

“The control over the participants and agenda of the workshop is a clear indication that the countries that are paying for the meeting want to ignore the will of the international community and reopen the decision,” says Marcelo Furtardo, a toxic waste campaigner for Greenpeace here.

U.N. figures show that 98 percent of the 400 million tonnes of waste produced each year comes from OECD countries. Of this, ten percent is sent to non-OECD member states.

Eighty-six percent of 738 waste-trade schemes investigated by Greenpeace between 1989 and 1994 appeared designed to take advantage of the recycling loophole by labelling the shipments “recycling” or “further use.” Greenpeace says thah most of these schemes were found either to be falsely labelled or lacking in adequate safety features.

At the first conference of parties in Piriapolis, Uruguay, in 1992, Senegal led an unsuccessful attempt by the Group of 77 developing countries to ban the trade in waste from rich to poor countries. Those efforts were taken up by successfully under Sri Lanka’s leadership at the Geneva meeting.

Since the Geneva meeting, the United States and Australia have been working quietly to weaken the ban, but several of their efforts have come unstuck.

Australian officials held secret talks with the Philippines in July last year to get Manila to accept more waste. Under Filipino law, the ban on importing hazardous waste does not cover “recyclable wastes” which include metals, solid plastic materials, electronic scrap, and lead-acid batteries.

Although the Filipinos agreed to further talks on the issue, Canberra took a similar proposal to India in October. But its efforts were exposed by Greenpeace activists the day before talks were due to get underway. The media spotlight forced Indian officials to reject the proposals.

U.S. officials have also tried to be discreet in their efforts to ease the ban, but New Scientist, a British magazine, blew their cover by publishing excerpts from several internal State Department documents it obtained last month.

“U.S. government officials will, over the next several months, engage in a range of activities to promote the U.S. view that categorical trade bans are undesirable from an environmental as well as trade standpoint… It will be appropriate for the U.S. to work quietly on some issues and let other parties… take the lead,” say the documents.

One of these activities is the Dakar meeting which Furtardo says is an attempt to convince poor countries to amend the ban at the next conference of parties which takes place in September in Madrid.

Contacted Tuesday, the State Department office coordinating waste trade efforts declined to comment, saying that its top negotiator was already on his way to Dakar.

In exchange for relaxing the ban, wealthy countries have been offering poor nations new disposal technology. But activists oppose this approach. “It’s often incinerators which have been rejected by communities in countries like the U.S.,” says Furtardo.

Some U.S. government advisors are also critical. “The U.S. attempt to undermine the ban is a regrettable retreat,” says Deeohn Ferris, a member of President Clinton’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council.

Greenpeace activists have been invited to the Dakar meeting by the Senegalese government. Jim Puckett, one of the coordinators of the group’s toxic waste work, left from its Amsterdam headquarters for Dakar Monday.

The waste trade also continues to be actively discussed in other forums. Last Friday, the French government asked the European Parliament to propose that the Basel convention be amended to ban waste trade for final disposal, but not for recyling.

On the same day, four Scandinavian countries, led by Denmark, made a counter-proposal that all waste should be banned through an official amendment to the convention.

Meanwhile, the European Union’s (EU) Environment Commissioner, Ritt Bjerregaard, said Monday she will table a proposal next month to reaffirm last year’s decision.

Jacques Santer, the chairman of the European Commission, said EU countries would follow the Nordic lead.