space Basel Action News, Vol 1, #1

Basel Ban Revisionism: Blaming the Victims

It is remarkable how certain ban opponents have twisted the meaning of the ban to implicate the non-OECD world as being too technologically weak to be able to adequately deal with hazardous waste.

The truth is that the reason the costs of waste disposal are so high in the OECD world is that these countries are unable to convince their populace that hazardous waste generation is acceptable and that any forms of hazardous waste disposal or management are safe enough to be allowed in their communities. If hazardous waste management was a success story in the OECD then there would hardly be a rational reason to export the problem.

The fact of the matter is that irresponsible OECD businesses wish to export an embarrassing and intractable problem the mountains of hazardous waste which they cannot themselves safely or economically manage.

If admission to Annex VII is seen as a mark of technological prowess rather than a quarantine against the effluent of the world's most affluent countries, we can easily envisage a complete disintegration of the ban with countries vying to become part of the problem rather than the solution.

If countries began to accept a false and revisionist premise that the reason for the ban was simply due to the lack of "technical capacity" for waste disposal on the part of the non OECD world, they will have entirely missed the point and will have embarked upon a path of globalizing a problem rather than leap frogging over it. Such a grievous error would then be compounded by believing that, by virtue of promises (and that's all they can be), to meet certain technical or other criteria, any country can then agree to be part of the Annex VII waste dealers "club". If admission to Annex VII is seen as a mark of technological prowess rather than a quarantine against the effluent of the world's most affluent countries, we can easily envisage a complete disintegration of the ban with countries vying to become part of the problem rather than the solution. Such a prospect would bring great joy to irresponsible industry everywhere. Its time to emphatically reinstate the objectives of the Convention and to say NO to both hazardous waste and its transboundary movement.
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