Keep Your Waste! – Relevance of the Basel Ban Amendment to the Global South

Abstract

There was an environmental awakening in developed countries in the end of the 20th century because of damages caused by the toxic waste produced in their industries. Consequently, there was a rise in cost for disposal of the toxic waste which was supplemented by the “Not-in-my-backyard” movement. In order to escape hefty disposal costs, the Northern, developed countries started dumping their hazardous, toxic wastes into the Southern, developing countries. The impoverished Southern countries allowed the Northern countries to dump their toxic waste into the Southern countries as landfill. The Southern countries lacked the infrastructure and the financial means to obtain a technology necessary for waste management instigating catastrophic effects on the environment and lives of their citizens. There was a public outcry against the disposal of hazardous waste, and this gave birth to a political will to formulate a regulation one of which was the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (“Basel Convention”) and the subsequent Ban amendment which has come into force as recently as December 2019. With the Ban amendment, the aim was and is to force the Norther countries to reduce their overall waste production and not export their waste to a selective few countries. The present paper tries to analyze the effect of the Ban amendment on the developing, Southern countries and whether the amendment is a step in the right direction for global environmental justice.