Transboundary Movements Of Hazardous Wastes Research Articles

Harvey Alter

ACS NEWS Harvey Alter ShareShare onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InRedditEmail C&EN, 2020, 98 (42), p 36November 2, 2020Cite this:C&EN 98, 42, 36AbstractHarvey Alter, 87, died June 27 in Frederick, Maryland. “Harvey had an eclectic career. Beginning as a bench chemist, he proceeded to R&D management, to tech transfer in the resource-recovery field, and then on to environmental and science policy. For 15 years, he represented various industry groups before the United Nations Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal. He taught at Frederick Community College pro bono for their Institute for Learning in Retirement. He was also an adjunct professor at American University and the University of Maryland University College for about 20 years. Harvey joined ACS in 1951 and served as president of the Chemical Society of Washington in 1972.”—Family of Harvey Alter Most recent title: Manager of environmental and natural resource public policy issues, US Chamber of Commerce Education: BS, chemistry, Queens College, 1952; PhD, physical chemistry, University of Cincinnati, 1957 Survivors:View: PDF | Full Text HTML

Major Criminal Issues in the Act on the transboundary Movement of hazardous Waste and their Disposal - focused on whether the waste engine is wastes subject to export or import restrictions(the Supreme Court's decision in case no. 2019DO6525 delivered in November 14, 2019) -

Major Criminal Issues in the Act on the transboundary Movement of hazardous Waste and their Disposal - focused on whether the waste engine is wastes subject to export or import restrictions(the Supreme Court's decision in case no. 2019DO6525 delivered in November 14, 2019) -

Urgent need to review domestic regulations in Japan for preventing illegal transboundary movement of hazardous wastes

• There is a need to study the growing trend in e-waste trading that appears to be shifting towards illegal recycling activities. An increasing number of cases of illegal waste trading have involved people from developing countries who reside in Japan. They export hazardous waste by attaching it to second-hand products sent from Japan to their home countries. • The Yokohama customs office has the only special force investigating hazardous waste exports; more than half the detected illegal cargo are components of dismantled vehicles containing illegal toxic or hazardous waste banned by the basel convention and is unlawful in Japan. • In Japan, recycling activities are under a different government sector jurisdiction from business exporting hazardous waste. Overseeing the export of hazardous waste attached to second-hand products can be problematic and is a weak point associated with the vertically divided administration system which needs to be reviewed and remediated.

Clearly Hazardous, Obscurely Regulated: Lessons from the Basel Convention on Waste Trade

As an internationally-traded commodity, plastic waste has long followed the profitability dynamics of the global waste and recycling market, leaving in its trace a disproportionate environmental and health burden on the world's most vulnerable populations. East Asian and Pacific countries, where most globally generated plastic waste has been exported since the late 1980s, are marked by underdeveloped, inefficient, or non-existent waste management infrastructures. Despite the highly visible environmental and human health impacts of plastic pollution, the global plastic waste trade has predominantly operated outside the scope of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal. In 2019, however, this treaty was amended to explicitly bring all but a narrow stream of plastic waste within the category of wastes controlled as “hazardous waste,” or “waste requiring special consideration.” This essay explains the international legal implications of the amendment and discusses potential challenges related to its implementation and enforcement. It argues that in order to be effective, the new plastic waste trading rules will require further legal clarity, greater transparency in plastic waste trade that is not regulated under the Convention, and stronger law enforcement cooperation between customs and environmental protection authorities, both within and between countries. Since controlling all plastic waste trade at point of export is, in practice, impossible given the state of global shipping infrastructures and container traffic volume, the most effective approach to curbing plastic waste pollution and illegal trade lies outside the mandate of the Basel Convention, notably, in assigning financial and environmental responsibility for plastic waste within plastic product supply chains.

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

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.

Import of Electronic Waste into Nigeria: the Imperative of a Regulatory Policy Shift

Abstract This article explores the regulation of transboundary movement of e-waste into Nigeria. The country has had an unsavoury history with the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes, and this has likely influenced its strict legislative response to such imports, including the decision to ban the transboundary movement of e-waste. However, the effectiveness of the ban is doubtful, as the importation of non-functional electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) or near-end-of-life EEE (which is classified as e-waste in Nigeria), is still thriving. The failure of the ban in curbing the transboundary movement of e-waste into Nigeria obliges policy makers to come up with new and innovative means to address this issue. It posits that the ban does not show an appreciation of the socio-economic realities and the generally weak regulatory climate in the country. The article thus argues for a shift in policy from outright ban of e-waste imports into Nigeria to more effective regulation and sustainable management.

The Impact of International and European Law on the Development of Environmental Protection Through Criminal Law in Poland

The issue of environmental protection through criminal law is primarily associated with the fight against the most serious attacks on the environment. The progressive degradation of natural ecosystems, which is an important consequence of the development of human civilisation, has shown that one of the most important challenges of modern man is to provide the environment with adequate and effective protection. It should be emphasized that although the main burden of such protection is implemented through administrative law and to a lesser degree through civil law instruments, the use of criminal law in environmental protection as an ultima ratio of this protection has proved to be absolutely necessary. Legal regulations regarding the criminal law protection of the environment in Poland have gone a long way in terms of development. It should be emphasized, however, that the shape and development of criminal law protection of the environment in Poland has been significantly influenced by European legislation, which was obviously related to Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004 and international law, in particular the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, signed on March 3, 1973 in Washington, DC, and the Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, which was opened for signature in Basel on March 22, 1989. The article presents the most important issues related to the impact of European and international law on the development of environmental protection through criminal law in Poland.

Criminological Characteristics of Organized Environmental Crime in the Russian Federation

Throughout the world, modern environmental crime is characterized by the emergence of new forms of criminal behavior, improving ways of committing crimes and steadily increasing participation of organized criminal groups and communities in their commission. Nowadays, organized environmental crime along with environmental terrorism constitute a significant security threat. The distinctive features of organized environmental crime include: longevity and stability of a criminal organization, which in most cases effectively manages a complex of criminal activities from the organizational and economic point of view, and also has the ability to minimize the risks arising in this connection, long-term planning of activities, involving individuals and commercial structures, building criminal networks. Another characteristic feature is its focus on the market (including the illegal one). The organized groups often engage in criminal activities in various areas, committing environmental and economic and other types of crimes, while the corruption component is an integral feature of them. Organized transnational environmental crime carries out its activities in such key areas as illegal trade in rare and endangered species of wild fauna and flora and their derivatives, illegal logging and trade in illegal timber, illegal turnover of waste including illegal transportation, storage, discharge and burial, transboundary movement of hazardous waste, illegal fishing. Law enforcement and law enforcement agencies of various states pooling their efforts to curb ecologically criminal behavior, neutralizing all stages of the crime: planning, illegal extraction of resources, transportation, marketing, laundering of proceeds from crime play an important role in combating organized environmental crime. Eliminating the economic basis of the activities of criminal groups, reducing their profitability, is the key to success in combating it. Improvement of international legislation for development will create an integrated system of measures to counteract organized environmental crime at the level of individual states and ensure unification of national legislative systems in terms of terminology, compositions, and sanctions applied for the commission of environmental crimes by organized groups.

Imports of plastic waste will need advance approval

Countries exporting contaminated or mixed types of postconsumer plastic waste will need consent from importing countries before shipping the material, under an international deal struck May 10. The move is designed to help developing countries control imports of used plastic from industrialized nations. Developing countries have been flooded with shipments of plastic waste, which they have little infrastructure to handle, since China stopped accepting it in 2018. “Many developing countries will, for the first time, have information about plastic wastes entering their country and be empowered to refuse plastic waste dumping,” says Sara Brosché, science adviser to the environmental coalition IPEN (International Persistent Organic Pollutants Elimination Network). Governments meeting in Geneva adopted the new restriction under an international environmental treaty, the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal. Environmental activists say the change will have the biggest impact on the US, which

Addressing Plastics under the “Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal” and Other International Developments

Addressing Plastics under the “Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal” and Other International Developments

Toxic Occupation: Leveraging the Basel Convention in Palestine

Reports by UN-affiliated institutions, human rights organizations, academic researchers, and individual community members, as well as Palestine's Environment Quality Authority (EQA), point to the continuing transfer to the West Bank of hazardous wastes from inside Israel, and by illegal Israeli settlement industries operating in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). Such transfers occur in contravention of the Geneva Conventions and of binding multilateral environmental agreements such as the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, to which both Israel and Palestine are party. This article argues that despite inherent limitations, there are opportunities for leveraging the Basel Convention to hold accountable perpetrators, given the severe environmental, health, and human rights consequences of the uncontrolled movement and disposal of waste on the Palestinian population in the oPt. To date, such opportunities have remained largely unexplored both in academia and by broader sectors of civil society.

1. International Transfer of Restricted or Prohibited Substances

During the past year, two key meetings—the eleventh meeting of the Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG-11) and the thirteenth meeting of the Basel Convention Implementation and Compliance Committee (ICC-13)—were held. Moreover, the joint meeting of the bureaux of the Conferences of the Parties (COP) to the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, the Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (PIC Convention), and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants was held in Geneva, Switzerland, on 15–16 November, mainly to prepare for the simultaneous COP of each of the conventions, which will be held back to back from 29 April to 10 May 2019. In OEWG-11 and ICC-13, several recommendations and considerations were formulated for COP-14 to the Basel Convention in 2019.

Organized Environmental Crime in Russia and Abroad: Criminological Characteristics and Countermeasures

Environmental crime is a constantly evolving form of criminal activity and its danger to the public is often underestimated. Environmental crime around the world is characterized by the emergence of new forms of criminal behavior, improvement of methods of committing crimes, a steady increase in the involvement of organized criminal groups and communities in their commission. The structure and nature of environmental crime have a distinct regional character, defined by parameters such as the environment, the presence on the territory of natural resources, proximity to state borders, as well as the effectiveness of conservation and law enforcement. Organized environmental crime, along with environmental terrorism, today, poses a significant threat to national security. Its distinctive features include: the durability and stability of a criminal organization, which, from an organizational and economic point of view, in most cases effectively manages complex criminal activities and has the ability to minimize the arising risks; long-term planning activities; the involvement of physical persons and commercial structures; the creation of criminal networks. Another characteristic is its focus on the market (including illegal). The main objective of criminal groups is to make profit. Often organized crime groups engage in criminal activities in various areas, committing environmental, economic and other types of crime, while corruption is a vital feature. Transnational organized environmental criminal activity is carried out in such key areas as illegal trade in rare and endangered species of wild fauna and flora and their derivatives; illegal felling of forest plantations and the trade of illegal timber; illegal trafficking of waste and illegal transportation, storage, discharge and disposal, including the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes; illegal fishing; illegal trade in ozone-depleting substances; illicit trade in radioactive substances and the illicit dumping of radioactive waste. An important role in the fight against organized environmental crime is given to the joint efforts of the law enforcement authorities of different States to prevent environmentally criminal behavior and to neutralize all stages of the crime: planning, illegal resource extraction, transportation, distribution, laundering of proceeds of crime. The elimination of the economic basis of criminal groups, reducing its profitability is the key to success in combating it. Improvement of international legislation will make it possible to create a comprehensive system of measures against organized environmental crime at the level of individual States and to ensure harmonization of national legislative systems from the point of view of terminology, formulations, and sanctions imposed for environmental offences by organized groups

INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS IN CHEMICAL SAFETY AT THE RESENT STAGE

Modern directions of activities are reported in the frame of international agreements in chemical safety-The Basel Convention on the control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal, the Rotterdam Convention on the prior informed consent procedure for certain hazardous chemicals and pesticides in international trade, the Stockholm convention on persistent organic pollutants. Taking into account that at the national level, especially in small-size countries, the same bodies represent their countries in international conventions, in 2011 under UNEP, a BRS convention (unified secretariat) was set up to improve coordination of Conventions, to raise the level of their cooperation and at the same time to lower expenses of their activities by setting up common services such as administration support, joimt clearing house, planning and holding meetings of all levels, training, providing technical assistance etc. The three conventions deal with a great number of the same substances in accordance with their objectives and area of activities which requires a deep coordination in the frame of Conventions both at the international and national levels. All three Conventions preserve their full independence but conducting a policy of synenergy that means collaboration and deep coordination,

E-waste: the problem persists after recycling

e-waste: the problem persists after recycling

Testing the boundaries between the Basel and MARPOL regimes: are they complementary or mutually exclusive?

Abstract Incidents relating to unsafe management of wastes generated due to blending operations on board vessels have ignited an ongoing discussion between two competing legal regimes: the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (Basel Convention) and the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships as modified by its 1978 Protocol (MARPOL). Despite that blending operations of bulk liquid cargoes during the sea voyage have been prohibited, unanswered questions remain regarding the potential applicability of the Basel Convention to ship-generated wastes while on board vessels and after their discharge at port reception facilities. This paper analyzes the relationship between the Basel Convention and MARPOL and the rationale for concluding that these regimes are indeed mutually exclusive.

1. International Transfer of Restricted or Prohibited Substances

The year saw developments with regard to new ratification of the Basel Convention and number of important decisions adopted in the thirteenth Conference of the Parties (COP-13). Two new parties—Angola and Sierra Leone—joined the Basel Convention in 2017, so its number of parties is now 186. No new parties ratified the Basel Protocol on Liability and Compensation for Damage Resulting from Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal and its numbers remain the same at eleven, which means that it is still far short of the twenty required to bring the protocol into force. In the case of the 1995 Amendment to the Basel Convention, five States—Algeria, Guinea, Lebanon, Malawi, and Maldives—became parties to it in 2017 and its number is now ninety-three, which is still less than the three-quarters of the parties of the amendment needed to bring it into force (see Status of Ratifications <http://www.basel.int/Countries/StatusofRatifications/tabid/1341/Default.aspx>). With regard to the PIC Convention, four parties—Iraq, Malta, Sierra Leone, and Turkey—joined in 2017 and the number of parties is now 160. Malta also ratified the Stockholm Convention, bringing its number of parties to 182.

The Ineffectiveness and Inadequacies of International Instruments in Combatting and Ending the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Environmental Degradation in Africa

Despite the fact that international instruments prohibit such activities, recent recurrent incidents involving the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes on the African continent highlight their inadequacies and ineffectiveness of international law in solving this problem. Despite some noticeable milestones achieved by the Bamako Convention, its shortcomings are conspicuous. In addition, the ban on transboundary movement of hazardous wastes is simply one dimension of the bigger problem faced by (many poor) African countries: poor management of the environment that ranges from water and air pollution, poor disposal of wastes, improper and inadequate treatment of domestically generated hazardous wastes, congestion, noise, and dumping. These international instruments deal with only a dimension of the problem faced by African states. It is argued that additional measures must be taken to complement these efforts. Such measures include the enactment of strong laws and policies, education of the masses and a virile civil society.

Policy compliance recommendations for international shipbreaking treaties for Bangladesh

The ship breaking industry in Bangladesh is challenged to balance economic goals with improving environmental and human health conditions. Since ship breaking is an inherently international industry, Bangladesh as a major shipbreaking party needs to adjust its national policy strategy to harmonize with international rules, regulations, and decision making. The Hong Kong International Convention on the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships (HKC) and the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Waste and their Disposal (BC) regulate how ships are sold, managed, traded, and scrapped. A policy gap analysis was used to determine whether and how current Bangladesh national policies conform with international shipbreaking conventions and to identify gaps in regulatory enforcement. Key informants' interviews were used to obtain expert opinions on existing policies and a grounded theory approach for data analysis. Although national laws do conform with international conventions, Bangladesh authorities are currently not able to fully implement either national or international regulations as they lack the necessary financial and technical capacity for monitoring and enforcement. In accordance with the “polluter pays principle,” the international shipbreaking policy regime should utilize a deposit-refund system to rectify the lack of capacity in developing countries to comply with regulations. Given initial estimates presented here, a global fund adequate to upgrade all facilities in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan (to recycle the current flow of end-of-life ships) could be fully financed by a deposit of ~0.3% of a new ship's purchase price per year.

E‐products, E‐waste and the Basel Convention: Regulatory Challenges and Impossibilities of International Environmental Law

Electronic waste is recognized as the fastest growing hazardous waste stream of the twenty‐first century. Because e‐waste streams contain highly valuable precious metals and other secondary resources as well as hazardous toxic substances, the issue of their regulation lies at a liminal space between products and wastes. This complex legal interface engages the distinct and sometimes contradictory international regimes of liberalized trade and environmental protection. With most global flows of e‐waste being treated by informal recycling industries in developing countries, and given the continued structural exclusion of these marginalized e‐waste recycling sectors from official waste governance paradigms, the globalization of e‐waste raises important environmental justice and North–South development issues. The present article examines the discussion of e‐waste within international environmental law. In particular, it assesses new guideline developments under the Basel Convention on Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Waste and their Disposal. It is argued that despite its overarching objectives in relation to human health and environmental protection, the Basel Convention and the newly adopted Technical Guidelines on E‐waste primarily ensure the continued circulation of obsolete electronic commodities in conditions that reproduce international externalities. The impossibility of this international environmental regime to foster any meaningful and authoritative notion of accountability over hazardous wastes that are generated through transboundary flows of ‘products’ inevitably limits its potential to curb the externalization of hazardous waste pollution to vulnerable populations who suffer the most acute health risks of global hi‐tech production, consumption and reproduction. In essence, the success of this international regime over ‘wastes’ depends very critically on its coupling with national legislative controls over ‘products’ and more importantly, necessitates serious reflection on the legal dimensions of the notion of sustainable consumption.