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Wednesday, April 29, 2020 / 04:59 PM / OpEd By Ahmed
Sule* / Header Image Credit: Down to Earth
According to the World Bank, 2.01 billion metric tons of municipal solid
waste is produced yearly globally. On a relative basis, the rich countries of
the Global North produce a sizeable proportion of the waste. The United States
and Canada are the largest global waste producers with
each of its citizens generating on average 941 and 850 kilogrammes of waste
annually respectively while the UK is one of the largest generators of
electronic waste globally producing an average of 21.1 kg of e-waste per
citizen.
There is a long history of toxic
colonialism whereby rich countries in Europe and North America outsource its
toxic waste to the poor countries of the global south for recycling. As the
West became more environmentally conscious in the seventies and eighties, the
dumping of hazardous waste such as plastics, electronic waste, radioactive
materials etc to developing countries with lax environmental standards became
the norm. In 1988, around 4,000 tonnes of radioactive materials from Italy
were dumped in Nigeria's Koko Port.
The trend continues today. Around 40 % of US electronic waste is exported to
Africa and Asia while Bangladesh, India and Pakistan have become the hub for
the dismantling of ships discarded by industrialised countries. Some
commentators have described the Agbogbloshie dump in Ghana, which currently
receives e-waste from the West, as the world's largest electronic waste
dump.
Before 2018, China was once the world's
largest importer of plastic waste accounting for 56% of the waste, however with
effect from April 2018, it banned the import of waste products into the
country. This had the unintended consequences of developed countries routing
some of its waste products to countries like Malaysia, Vietnam and the
Philippines. An investigation by Greenpeace revealed that the export of plastic
waste from UK, Germany, Spain, France, Australia and the US to Malaysia
increased from 168,500 tonnes in 2016 to 456,000 tonnes in the first half of
2018.
As the West continues to outsource its
toxic waste to the rest of the world, it also outsources the health and
environmental consequences of the waste. People living and working near the
sites of these toxic dumps experience respiratory sickness, water
contamination, lead poisoning, developmental disorders and cancer, which has
resulted in several deaths. In Agbogbloshie where there is a large food market,
the toxins from the waste have entered the food chain.
Recently, there has been pushback with
some South-East Asian countries putting measures in place to return contaminated
waste to the west. The Global South got a boost in late 2019 when Saint Kitts
and Nevis and Croatia ratified the Basel Convention Ban Amendment. The Basel
Convention is the preeminent global legal instrument regulating the
transboundary movement of hazardous wastes. As a consequence of reaching the
required threshold for ratifications, the Ban Amendment, which prohibits the
export of hazardous waste from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) to developing countries, became international law with
effect from 5 December 2019.
Despite the enshrinement of the Ban
Amendment into international law, the Global South and environmentalists might
have to temper their optimism for several reasons. First, even though 98
countries have so far ratified the convention, some of the largest waste
producers like the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are yet to ratify the
ban amendment, hence they don't fall within the scope of the ban amendment. The
USA is not even a party to the Basel Convention Treaty. In 2019, the United
States Environmental Protection Agency wrote to the OECD in
2019 expressing its objection to the latter's implementation of the Basel
Convention plastic waste amendments.
Second, certain wastes such as tyres and
clothes, which have toxic properties and are also dumped in developing
countries, are not classified as hazardous under the Basel
Convention. The export of used clothes to developing countries has
reached unmanageable levels. A recent ITV News investigation revealed
that 63, 418,990kg of second-hand clothes from the UK were sent to be sold in
Ghana in 2019. Some manufacturers of these clothes use hazardous materials like
formaldehyde, which the International Agency for Research on Cancer has
described as carcinogenic. When waste tyres are shipped to developing countries
like India and Malaysia, as these tyres are burnt, toxic chemicals and gases
are released into the atmosphere, which can cause considerable damages.
Third, there are loopholes within the
Basle Convention, which can be exploited. The Convention allows the shipment of
hazardous materials if the exporting party declares the exact nature of the
waste and if the prior informed consent of the importer is obtained.
Documentations could be altered to bypass this process by describing the
material for repair purposes. This approach has often been used for scraping
ships and disposal of electronic waste. Illegal and false documentation,
corruption and mislabeling could circumvent the spirit of the Basel Convention.
Furthermore, the lack of resources and ineffective monitoring structure might
allow hazardous material to be smuggled into the Global South.
Fourth, countries like the United
Kingdom, Germany, Belgium and Italy ratified the Ban Amendment in 1997, 2002,
2003 and 2009 respectively, however, despite the ratifications, these countries
are currently some of the largest exporters of waste to developing countries.
Finally, as long as the insatiable
consumption habits and accumulation of waste continue to persist in the Global
North, it is will continue to jeopardise Basel Convention's
ability to put an end to the one-way traffic of hazardous trash from the west to
the rest of the world.
About The Author
Ahmed Olayinka Sule is a CFA Charterholder,
photojournalist and social critic. He is an Alumnus of the University of Arts,
London; where he obtained a Certificate in Photojournalism. He has worked on
various photojournalism projects including Obama: The Impact, Jesus
Christ: The Impact, The Williams Sisters etc. He can be contacted via
e-mail at suleaos@gmail.com and via
Twitter @Alatenumo
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