Curbing the illegal shipment of waste
07-FEB-2008
The Basel Convention and IMPEL have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with a view to strengthening cooperation between the two bodies. Expertise will be shared to curb illegal traffic of hazardous and other wastes subject to the Basel Convention.
Concrete activities will focus on inspections, monitoring, reporting and enforcement of the provisions of the Basel Convention. There will also be training activities for Parties to the Basel Convention that are developing countries and countries with economies in transition on legislation, regulation and best practices.
'Enforcement remains a serious issue in the implementation of the Basel Convention' said Katharina Kummer Peiry, Executive Secretary of the Basel Convention. 'This is why cooperation with IMPEL and benefiting from IMPEL's expertise in the enforcement area will be of tremendous support to the Basel Convention, especially as far as new problematic waste streams such as electronic wastes are concerned.'
Mr. Gerard Wolters, Chair of IMPEL's provisional board, indicated that both organizations needed each other for the effective implementation of environmental legislation in the area of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their environmentally sound management, high priority topics for IMPEL. He stated that in terms of enforcement, waste management is the most challenging of all environmental issues.
Discussions have started on the formulation of a work programme for cooperation using Basel Convention projects with an enforcement component as a basis. The first area of further cooperation will probably be related to monitoring shipments of electrical and electronic waste from Europe to developing countries and to the environmentally sound management of such waste.
On a similar theme, earlier this month in Northern Ireland, Environment Minister Arlene Foster spoke with her Dublin counterpart, John Gormley TD, about the need to return the illegal waste that had been dumped in Northern Ireland.
In several successful prosecutions taken by the Environment and Heritage Service recently, material in illegal landfill sites had been identified as originating from South of the Border. Mr Gormley is the Irish Minister responsible for Environment, Heritage and Local Government.
The Ministers spoke in the margins at the first British Irish Council Sectoral (Environment) meeting to be held since the return of devolution, which took place at Clandeboye Estate, Bangor. Afterwards, Arlene Foster said she had a constructive conversation with Minister Gormley and had used the opportunity to propose a way forward on the issue. Other issues discussed at the meeting included coastal zone management and climate change.
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