UNCTAD promotes toxic waste dumping in Asia

From James Williams, Greenpace, 11 February 2000

BANGKOK/AMSTERDAM, 11 February, 2000:—The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) 11.

The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is meeting in Bangkok from 12-19 February, 2000. UNCTAD has a professed mission to assist less industrialized countries to progress sustainably. 2 The Basel Ban is an agreement banning the export of hazardous wastes from rich countries belonging to the Organization of Economic and Development (OECD) to non-OECD nations.

[...]is promoting hazardous waste dumping to Asia and to other less industrialized regions by encouraging them to open boarders to toxic exports from rich countries, two international environmental organisations, Greenpeace and Basel Action Network, stated today.

A report, released—on the eve of UNCTAD meeting in Bangkok, 12-19th February M-^V by Greenpeace and BAN, outlines several recent cases of hazardous waste dumping in Asia, including the export of toxic ships-for-scrap to India and China, and the export of contaminated lead scrap to Thailand and the Philippines.

The two organisations accused the UN body of becoming a willing tool of a powerful minority of industries and industrial nations, such as US, Canada, Australia and Japan, who seek to keep the gates of Asia open to receive their poisonous waste. It is seen as ironic that UNCTAD has spent considerable effort to suggest means to undermine the Basel Ban2 by using free trade jargon although it is meant to assist less developed countries to progress sustainably.

The 1994 Basel Ban on dumping of hazardous wastes on less industrialized nations by Western countries was a hard-won victory for the G77 nations and China. It is a inappropriate that international organizations such as UNCTAD continue to keep toxic dumping alive by undermining the Ban, said Jim Puckett of Basel Action Network.

Asian countries, particularly Thailand, India and the Philippines are among the most preferred dumping grounds for the West’s hazardous wastes, which enter these countries in the pretext of being wastes destined for recycling.

Not all recycling is green. When you recycle hazardous wastes, you’re left with a toxic legacy, said Tara Buakamsri, Greenpeace’s Toxics Campaigner in Thailand.

We’re here to expose UNCTAD’s greenwash, and alert the people of Asia to prevent their countries from becoming the dumping ground for the West. Asian nations should ratify the Basel Ban to further protect their people and environment, said Marcelo Furtado, Toxics Campaigner with Greenpeace International.

The activist organizations demanded that UNCTAD should stop working against the Basel Ban but to seek to fulfil its mandate of assisting the less industrialized world in their efforts to avoid the toxic development path taken by the rich countries.

Notes to the editors

A report, entitled UNCTAD’s Role in Fostering Toxic Waste Trade, is available on http://www.greenpeace.org/~toxics/toxfreeasia/unctad Pictures and footage will be available from Greenpeace’s picture desk website: http//www.greenpeace.org/library/picturedesk.html

1 The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is meeting in Bangkok from 12-19 February, 2000. UNCTAD has a professed mission to assist less industrialized countries to progress sustainably.

2 The Basel Ban is an agreement banning the export of hazardous wastes from rich countries belonging to the Organization of Economic and Development (OECD) to non-OECD nations.