By Pat Phibbs, Bureau of National Affairs

Generators of the pollutants in the United States want the treaty to be consistent with existing international provisions governing hazardous wastes, while some environmental advocates want the talks to be an opportunity to end the incineration of wastes.

At a press briefing, Brooks Yeager, deputy assistant secretary of state for the environment, discussed the negotiations scheduled for Dec. 4-9 in Johannesburg, South Africa (see related item in this issue). Representatives of 120 nations will be negotiating the treaty that will be formally known as the Stockholm Convention on Implementing International Action on Certain Persistent Organic Pollutants.

The treaty is scheduled to be signed at a diplomatic conference in May 2001, in Stockholm.

Yeager, who will lead the U.S. negotiating team, said he does not believe the POPs treaty should be "redundant" with the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal. The Basel pact, adopted in 1989, is designed to reduce cross-border movements of hazardous waste to a minimal level, improve controls on the movement of waste, prevent illegal traffic, and ensure that waste is disposed of as close as possible to the source of generation.

The United States signed the Basel Convention in 1989, and the Senate provided its consent to ratification in 1992. Before the United States can formally ratify the convention however, Congress must pass and the president must sign legislation that would implement the agreement's requirement.

Industry and environmental organizations disagree on whether waste management provisions in Basel sufficiently protect the public and environment.

The POPs treaty aims to ban nine pesticides and three industrial toxins and byproducts. The pesticides are aldrin, chlordane, endrin, DDT, dieldrin, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex, and toxaphene. The toxins and byproducts are polychlorinated biphenyls, furans, and dioxins.

"We do not want to create a new waste regime" in the POPs treaty, Yeager said. "But, we recognize that POPs are special, requiring extra care." The negotiations will need to define how to provide for that "extra care" in the treaty, he said.

Industry Wants Consistency Michael Walls, an attorney for the American Chemistry Council, told BNA Nov. 28 that there is the potential for the POPs treaty to "ignore the already substantial international law that is in place for hazardous waste under the Basel Convention. It would be a questionable use of resources to attempt to develop a waste management scheme [in the POPs treaty] that ignores what's been done under Basel."

"We want [the POPs treaty] to refer to and be consistent with Basel," Walls said. The American Chemistry Council represents major U.S. industrial chemical manufacturers.

Anti-Incineration Sentiment Some environmental organizations want incineration of POPs to be prohibited by the treaty. Environmental groups from 23 countries have formed the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, or "GAIA."

GAIA held its first meeting Nov. 30-Dec. 1 near Johannesburg. The group describes its mission as being to end "the incineration of all forms of waste and to promote economic and environmental sustainability and justice throughout the world." In a written response to questions, Neil Tangri, a U.S. member of GAIA, said the group plans to issue a statement position statement regarding goals for the treaty on Dec. 1.

The International POPs Elimination Network, which consists of dozens of environmental and health advocacy groups, has developed recommendations for waste issues in the treaty.

IPEN is not convinced that waste disposal stipulations in the Basel Convention would adequately protect public health. Basel does not provide any specific rules for waste disposal, IPEN said. While some disposal guidelines have been issued under that treaty, they are "not comprehensive, often out of date, and are not binding in any way," IPEN said.

Instead of relying on Basel, the countries that are negotiating the POPs treaty should define ways of disposing of wastes that protect health and the environment, IPEN said.

Incineration can create dioxins and furans, which are among the 12 POPs negotiators are seeking to eliminate, IPEN wrote in a position paper it began to distribute before the negotiations started.

Drafts of the POPs treaty have said the chemicals should be destroyed in an "environmentally sound manner."

The treaty should define "environmentally sound" to mean "processes that destroy all the toxic constituents and toxic by-products of the feedstock to the maximum extent available and do not create or release other POPs," IPEN said. "Incineration and the other usual methods of treating POPs do not meet this Best Available Technique standard," IPEN said.

IPEN supports technologies such as gas-phase chemical reduction, which uses hydrogen, steam, and heat to transform organic wastes into substances that are less toxic.

The treaty should define "environmentally sound destruction" as using methods that destroy POPs 100 percent, IPEN said.

IPEN also urged treaty negotiators to agree not to ship POPs across an ocean unless they are being shipped for disposal, and on-site destruction is not possible.

Whatever financial mechanism the treaty finally provides to help developing countries reduce POPs, should also provide money and technical assistance to help these countries destroy POPs, IPEN said.

Draft Calls for Consistency The chairman's draft of the treaty, released Aug. 3, states that POPs should be managed and transported in an "environmentally sound manner" that is "consistent with the Basel Convention."

One of first decisions negotiators must make is whether they will use the chairman's draft or the draft that was released after the fourth round of negotiations in March as their template for the debate. U.S. negotiators, industry and nongovernmental organizations have told BNA they expect the parties to accept the chairman's draft.

Another issue that remains to be sorted out, according to both drafts, is whether the treaty would simply require signatories to manage wastes "in a manner protective of human health and the environment," or if that provision should be subject to a nation's "capabilities and subject to the availability of technical and financial assistance."

Official pre-meeting copies of POPs documents are available at http://irptc.unep.ch/pops on the World Wide Web.