No teeth for laws against cross-border dumping

Fourth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention, The Star Online (Malaysia), Wednesday 25 Feburary 1998

KUCHING: The Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention, which has agreed to an international ban on transboundary waste dumping, does not have enough power or jurisdiction to enforce the ban effectively, said Malaysian environmentalist Gurmit Singh.

He said the convention had not been effective enough in curbing illegal toxic-waste trafficking or tackling government-approved export dealings.

He said that even though the treaty on the ban was agreed upon in Basel, Switzerland, in 1989, it had been of little effect up till today.

There is no teeth. Who is going to enforce the ban? There is still a big trade in toxic waste going on in the world now.

A lot of countries generating the waste are willing to pay millions to dump it in Third World countries which willingly allow them in. There are a lot of contradictions, he said.

Gurmit Singh said there were a lot of loopholes in policies on toxic-waste generation and disposal and they were being exploited.

He pointed out that some Third World countries must share the blame for allowing such waste to be imported.

Gurmit Singh said more incentives must be given for industries to generate less waste, for more facilities to be set up to treat waste internally and for better technology to be developed to control waste-generation.