The Dakar workshop on toxic-waste trade left both the exporting countries and green activists fuming
THE dirty linen of the developed countries was brought out in the open and, as
expected, created a furore. The setting
was the 3-day workshop on the Basel
Convention held in Dakar, Senegal,
between March 15-17. Green activism
had already heated up the debate on the
transboundary movement of hazardous
waste, which the Basel Convention govems, since early February.
The acrimony was toxic, and almost
turned the workshop into a battlefield.
Denmark, however, diffused the crisis
by offering to convene an "informal
advisory group" at Copenhagen in May
to hold further dialogues in a search for
common grounds. In the end, hosts
Senegal took a stand, which led to
the workshop discussing the technical
problems of implementing
the ban.
The workshop was to
discuss the decision taken in
March, 1994, at the 2nd
Conference of Parties (cop)
in Geneva by the 65 signatories of the Convention, to
ban shipments of waste
from the 25 most industrialised nations which make
up the Organisation of
Economic Cooperanon and 't
Development (OECD), to
non-OECD countries. Waste
being transported solely for disposatwas
to be banned immediately, while trade
in recyclable waste would be banned
after 1997.
Greenpeace International had been
claiming for the last few months that the
toxic imperialists, especially the United
States, Canada, Australia and Germany
were setting up this "us $250,000 workshop" to overturn the ban. So, the fuse
vm easily lit when the us and its allies
came to Dakar armed with a host of
iodustry representatives and vigorously
lobbied against the ban which, they
declared, was "undermining the envijamentally sound management of hazardous waste."
The green groups had their hackles
raised since early February, when 2 confidential White House doc34ments bearing incriminating evidence against the
Clinton administration were reportedly
leaked. The 1st, dated October 1994,
was a draft Basel Convention Action
Plan. "the us government officidls will...
engage in a range of activities to pro-
mote the us view that categorical trade
bans are undesirable from an environ-
mental as well as trade standpoint and
that the OECD/non-OECD ban should be
modified," it said. Even more serious
wag its directive that "It will be appropriate for the us to work quietly on some issues and let other parties... take the lead".
The 2nd "leak" was a memorandum
to the Clinton administration from Rafe
Pomerance, deputy assistant secretary
for environment and development.
Pornerance, former president of the
well-known environmental NGO,
Friends of the Earth, argues that before
ratifying the Basel Convention the us
should ensure that the charter is amended to permit shipments of waste so long
as the exporting and importing countries agree mutually, and it is managed
using environmentally sound methods.
The us is yet to sign the Basel agreement.
Pornerance also says that by not
including "such a fundamental change"
as the ban in the Convention, it had
been given merely a political, not a legal
status.
The environmentalists accused the
us of launching an evil campaign to tear
apart the Convention. Denmark, on the
other hand, felt that the only way the
toxic imperialists could be subdued was
by legalising the ban and making it
binding. But its efforts to push thriough
an amendment on this count have been
resisted fiercely.
The rest of the European Community members, with the exception of
Finland and Sweden, are hostile to this
idea. Backed by Germany, which has a
thriving business in waste export, they
have $tressed that no individual member has the right to propose an amend-
ment. Denmark has even
been threatened with legal
action if it does not abandon
its stand.
So the atmosphere was
crackling with tension on
the eve of the Dakar workshop. Greenpeace also pro-
duced another secret document from the International
Chamber of Commerce's
(icc) Paris headquarters
regarding its determination
to "use" the workshop to
reverse the ban. Greenpeace
activists took to the streets in Paris on
March 14, putting up banners and
dumping huge piles of waste before the
entrance to the icc office.
But the toxic imperialists did not
have their way in Dakar, after all. Bakary
Kante, director of Senegal's environment ministry, playing the referee, stubbornly stuck to the earlier official statement which said that Senegal was not prepared to "reopen the discussions on
the ban that took place last March".
However, in its final statemeAft the
workshop emphasised that there is an
"urgent need to accelerate the process to
resolve definitions".
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