No teeth, yet
The Basel Convention awaits ratification of key instruments
The Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, ratified by 162 countries including India, asks nations to ensure the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous wastes.
The treaty prohibits the export of any kind of waste to a country if that country does not wish to import it. Should it choose to import certain hazardous wastes, the treaty also requires the exporting countries, usually the more industrialised ones, to ensure that a movement document containing details about the waste, its importer, purpose of movement and other such information accompanies the hazardous waste from the point of origin to the point of disposal. Further, it requires that the wastes move across borders only if the exporter does not have the technical capacity or necessary facilities to dispose the wastes domestically, and the importer requires the wastes for the recycling or recovery industries.
The Basel Protocol on Liability and Compensation for Damage Resulting from Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal places the liability of damage on the exporter of the hazardous waste until the disposer in the importing country takes its possession. The liability, thereafter, lies with the disposer. But five years since the protocol was adopted, the treaty still does not have the requisite support to make it legally binding. Even if it were to get the requisite numbers (it requires 20 signatories to ratify but only 3 have so far), it would continue to remain weak should most countries choose not to ratify it.
The convention has never banned hazardous waste trade. It tried to create a class system in waste management, arguing that it would restrict trade between countries based on their capacity to treat waste. In 1995, an amendment was adopted to ban the export of all hazardous wastes for final disposal and recycling from countries of the EU, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries and Liechtenstein, to all other countries. This was done at the insistence of a "pro-ban coalition' comprising the Nordic countries, some developing countries and environmental group Greenpeace. Other countries would now be unable to import from the industrialised countries until they make it to the elite list. But this amendment still waits for the required number of votes.
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