10-Sep-2019: Basel Ban Amendment becomes law

The 1995 Basel Ban Amendment, a global waste dumping prohibition, has become an international law after Croatia ratified it on September 6, 2019.

The Basel Ban Amendment is an agreement taken by Basel Convention Parties to prohibit the member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Union (EU), and Liechtenstein from exporting hazardous wastes as defined by the Convention to other countries – primarily developing countries or countries with economies in transition.

Croatia became the 97th country to ratify the ban, which was adopted by the parties to the Basel Convention in 1995, to protect human health and the environment against the adverse effects of hazardous wastes. BAN is a Unites States-based charity organisation and is one among the organisations and countries, which created the Basel Ban Amendment — hailed as a landmark agreement for global environmental justice.

The Ban Amendment prohibits all export of hazardous wastes, including electronic wastes and obsolete ships from 29 wealthiest countries of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to non-OECD countries.

The Ban Amendment had been stalled for all these years due to uncertainty over how to interpret the Convention. With this year’s deposit of the ratification of Croatia, the Basel Ban Amendment has now received the requisite number of countries to enter into the force of law.  This will happen on 5 December 2019.  However, it is important to note that many countries, in particular all of the EU countries, have already implemented it into their national law.

However, countries like the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia, India, Brazil, and Mexico are yet to ratify the ban.

The US produces the most waste per-capita but has failed to ratify the Basel Convention and has actively opposed the Ban Amendment. Non-adherence to international waste trade rules has allowed unscrupulous US ‘recyclers’ to export many hundreds of containers of hazardous electronic waste each week to developing countries for so-called recycling. Nearly, 40 per cent of e-waste delivered to US recyclers is exported to Asian and African countries.

The recycling involves the burning, melting and chemically stripping electronic waste by desperate, unprotected workers in highly polluting operations. Further, wastes from the shipping companies — old ships, hazardous asbestos and flammable gases and oils — end up on beaches in South Asia where they create pollution, occupational disease and death due to fires and explosions.

The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal was adopted on 22 March 1989 and entered into legal force on 5 May 1992. Numerous international scandals regarding hazardous waste trafficking that began to occur in the late 1980s spurred the call for the treaty. The objective of the Basel Convention is to protect human health and the environment from the adverse effects of wastes, in particular taking into account the vulnerabilities of developing countries. Treaty obligations include: 1) reducing and minimizing waste at source; 2) managing wastes within the country in which they are generated; 3) reducing transboundary movement of wastes to a minimum; 4) managing wastes in an environmentally sound manner; and 5) strictly controlling waste trade that does occur via a notification and consent mechanism known as “prior informed consent”. The treaty currently has 187 Parties.

16-May-2019: India sets the tone at COP meetings of Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions held in Geneva.

The joint meetings of three conventions on chemicals and waste that is the fourteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal  (COP 14) was held along with the ninth meeting of the COP to Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade and the ninth meeting of the COP to Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. The theme of the meetings this year was “Clean Planet, Healthy People: Sound Management of Chemicals and Waste”.

An Indian delegation of Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, and comprising other ministries such as Agriculture, Chemicals, and Electronics and Information Technology participated in the meeting held in Geneva, Switzerland, from 29 April to 10 May 2019.

In Basel Convention, two important issues were discussed and decided, i.e. technical guidelines on e-waste and inclusion of plastic waste in the PIC procedure. The draft technical guidelines stipulated the conditions when used electrical and electronic equipment destined for direct reuse, repair, refurbishment or failure analysis should be considered as non-waste. India had major reservations regarding these provisions as in the name of re-use, repair, refurbishment and failure analysis there was a possibility of dumping from the developed world to the developing countries including India in view of the growing consumption of electronic equipment and waste across the world.  The Indian delegation strongly objected the proposed decision on these guidelines during plenary and did not allow it to be passed by the conference of the parties (COP).

Many rounds of multilateral and bilateral negotiations happened under the aegis of the Convention Secretariat in order to address India’s concerns which were supported by a large number of other developing countries. On the final day of the COP, a modified decision was adopted in which all the concerns raised by India were incorporated.

These were: dumping of e-waste in developing countries; recognition that the interim guideline has issues and further work is required specially on the provision on distinguishing waste from non-waste; the guidelines were adopted on an interim basis only; the tenure of the expert working group was extended to address the concerns raised by India; and the usage of interim guidelines to be done only on a pilot basis.

Due to the strong intervention by the Indian delegation, it was possible to defend the country’s interest against the potential dumping of e-waste by developed countries and thereby opened a window for further negotiations and corrections in the interim technical guidelines on e-waste.

Under the Basel Convention, another major achievement of COP 14 was the decision to amend the convention to include unsorted, mixed and contaminated plastic waste under PIC (Prior Informed Consent) procedure and improve the regulation of its transboundary movement. This is a significant step taken towards addressing plastic pollution which has become a major environmental concern across the globe.

Further, Basel Convention has also adopted partnership on plastic which was welcomed by the Indian delegation. These steps will help prevent the illegal dumping of plastic wastes in developing countries. India has already imposed a complete prohibition of import of solid plastic waste into the country. India has also made an international commitment to phase-out single-use plastic. India fully supported this exercise and one of the members of the Indian delegation was co-chair in the contact group which negotiated this agreement for amendment in the annexes of Basel Convention to bring plastic waste under PIC procedure.

Under the Stockholm Convention the COP decided to list “Dicofol” in Annex A without any exemption. The “PFOA” was also listed with some exemptions in the Annex A of the Stockholm Convention. Under the Rotterdam Convention, two new chemicals (Phorate and HBCD) were added in the list for mandatory PIC procedure in international trade.