An Inter Press Service Feature

GENEVA, Mar 21 1994(IPS) - Eight signatories of the 1989 Basel Convention on toxic waste disposal come face to face with Greenpeace this week in a showdown aimed at ending the Western world's dumping practices in Third World countries.

The eight countries, Australia, Canada, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Britain and the United States, all export hazardous waste -- from household rubbish to toxic PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyl) that can kill human beings -- to developing countries for dumping and recycling.

Quite often, the countries are not fully informed of the content of the waste -- or its dangers -- and quite often governments of poor countries are lured into accepting shipments for payment.

This week delegates from over a hundred countries, both industrialised as well as developing, will meet here to debate ways of limiting this transport under the 1989 Basel Convention. It is the second time they have met since the convention was signed.

Greenpeace activists say there is a good chance such practices will be made illegal. A Danish proposal on the agenda calls for a total ban on the transportation of all hazardous waste from the 24 industrialised countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to developing countries.

The proposal is supported by the Group of 77 developing countries from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, who are led by Sri Lanka. Most of the OECD countries are also in favour of the ban.

The stumbling block is the group of eight countries who oppose the ban. And while for example the United States has not even ratified the Basel Convention and therefore cannot vote, they may just have their way if they can persuade other countries to come to a consensus.

The eight countries blocking the vote are responsible for more than half of all toxic waste exports worldwide.

''We've got to get this to a vote,'' says Jim Valette, head of Greenpeace's toxic trade campaign, as he tallies the number of countries that have passed legislation banning such exports. He counts 44 countries -- more than the two-third number required to pass a proposal.

Cracks have also begun to appear in the governmental structures of some of the worst offenders in toxic waste dumping. Last week, both of Britain's opposition parties charged that the government was exploiting a ''toxic loophole'' in the Basel Convention.

They said that most of the 105,000 tonnes of waste Britain exported last year, was simply ''dumped''. They called for the loophole to be changed.

In January this year, Brazil returned 300 tonnes of British toxic waste which had been exported for recycling in a notorious fertiliser plant in Brazil's Mata Atlantica rainforest.

Kevin Stairs, a Greenpeace activist from Heidelberg, Germany, says in the absence of a ban, countries at the meet may be persuaded to reach a consensus that would exempt waste for recycling. He says this would be useless because it would merely present a situation whereby countries would simply re-label their waste.

''Even if it is recycled, that is worse than dumping, because more people are exposed to it and the recycling processes have just as many dangerous side-effects, Recycling is a complete myth,'' he says.

He warns that a U.S. proposal to ban the transportation of hazardous waste a few weeks ago, does precisely that -- exempt so- called 'safe' recyclable wastes. The United States would also exempt countries that it has specific bilateral agreements with, or those that have equivalent disposal standards.

Stairs says that this is not sufficient.

''It is not even necessary to export the waste. In 1987, the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment published a report saying there was technology that could have been phased in over five years to reduce waste by 50 percent with little or no effect on the economy. That was ignored and today there is more waste than ever.''

Examples of hazardous waste range from the absurd to the highly toxic. For example, many of the eight targeted by Greenpeace send diaper waste from Europe and North America all the way to Indonesia. The United States also exports heavy metal scrap to Bangladesh as fertiliser.

The scrap metal industry, in fact, is most strongly opposed to any export ban. Although scrap metal and metal slag are agreed to be a valuable resource, even delegates to the Basel Convention admit that it is contaminated with toxic heavy metals like cadmium and lead which can contaminate the environment during the re- smelting process.

Recently, a German company exported unwanted pesticides to Albania as 'humanitarian aid' -- unfortunately for them, Greenpeace caught the shipment and brought the waste back to Germany.

Since the Basel Convention was signed in 1989, more than 500 attempts to export over 500 million tonnes of waste from OECD to non-OECD countries have been catalogued, and Greenpeace says that this ''is only the tip of the iceberg''. E)

Several other issues are also up for discussion at the five-day meeting. Among them is a proposal for liability for the export of hazardous waste. Greenpeace would like to see 'joint liability' legislation -- which would make the manufacturer, the exporter, the carrier and the importer jointly liable.

OECD countries say liability should only exist for groups in possession of the waste but Stairs says that this would encourage exports.

For example, under U.S. law, the 'generators' -- or manufacturers -- of waste are liable for their own toxic end products. If international law did not make them liable, Stairs says that companies would still try to get waste out of the country, where they would no longer be liable.

Worse still, countries like Austria and Canada say that 'negligence' would have to be proved before countries were made liable. This, says Stairs, is very dangerous because companies or countries would not be liable unless someone was actually injured.

Countries at the weeklong Geneva meet which started Monday are also debating the creation of two funds -- one to pay to clean up toxic waste accidents and the other to pay for the establishment of regional centres to track the waste trade.

Another issue on the table is the 'environmentally sound management of waste' which, Stairs says, is yet another dangerous discussion that is often linked with the discussion of 'cleaner production'.

''What we want is clean production -- not just cleaner production. In most cases, waste is not necessary,'' he says.

Greenpeace and other activists hope that the Geneva meet will end with concrete legislation. At the end of the convention in Basel and the first meeting of the signatories to the convention in Piriapolis, Uruguay, Greenpeace hung banners outside the conference halls that read: 'The Basel Convention legalises toxic terror' and 'The Basel Convention still legalises toxic waste.'

''We've brought the banner again,'' says Valette. ''But I certainly hope we won't have to hang it out again.'' (END/IPS/EN/PC/PP/AF/94)

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