Green Groups Call on USA to Ratify International Toxic Waste Dumping Ban as Part of Basel Treaty

 

BASEL Action Network
For Immediate Release

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Washington D.C., Seattle, August 9, 2001. Environmentalists expressed strong disagreement today with the U.S. Administration’s stated intention of ratifying only the original 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal without ratifying a 1995 amendment to that treaty that effectively bans the dumping of hazardous wastes from developed to developing countries. The environmental groups claim that the original Basel Convention without the Basel Ban, does more to legitimize international waste dumping than it does to prevent it and efforts to ratify the original Convention without the Ban Amendment represent a regressive attempt to turn back the clock to the days of free trade in waste.

“Ratifying the 1989 Basel Convention today without simultaneously ratifying the 1995 Basel Ban Amendment is tantamount to a new 51st state joining the United States by ratifying the original 1787 US Constitution without accepting the subsequent bill of rights or the amendment banning slavery,” said Basel Action Network (BAN) coordinator Jim Puckett. “Its simply not acceptable.”

The Basel Ban Amendment was adopted by a consensus of over 90 countries in 1995 to halt the practice of toxic waste producers and brokers from rich, industrialized countries from exporting toxic wastes to developing countries to avoid the high costs of proper waste prevention or disposal in their home countries. Yet the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Recycling Coalition in both the Clinton and Bush administrations have actively opposed this ban and have been highly influential in shaping the United States position opposing it.

“Sadly, the United States position on this important moral and environmental question has been dictated by a very small sector of the business community,” said Puckett. This special interest lobby wishes to maintain a free trade in toxic wastes so that they can export their pollution problems to dubious, dangerous and dirty recycling operations in developing countries,” he said.

The letter organized by the Basel Action Network which watchdogs toxic trade issues worldwide, was signed by a dozen prominent national environmental groups including the Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Center for International Environmental Law, Earthrights International and the Sierra Club. It states that while the green groups will stand behind any proper government effort to ratify the Basel Convention with the Ban Amendment, they will oppose any “cynical” move to pretend the Ban Amendment never was passed, and ratify and implement only the “minimalist and inadequate” 1989 Convention.

For more information:

• Basel Action Network Briefing Paper Number 2
• www.BAN.org
  

  Contact:

  Jim Puckett
  Basel Action Network Secretariat
  Phone: 1.206.652.5555, Fax: 1.206.652.5750
  E-Mail: jpuckett@ban.org