Senegal-US Fails to Overturn Waste Dumping Ban

[The.Greenbase@gb.greenpeace.org]

>> US FAILS TO OVERTURN WASTE DUMPING BAN: 


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                    GREENPEACE PRESS RELEASE
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>> US FAILS TO OVERTURN WASTE DUMPING BAN: 
YOUSSOU N'DOUR AND ENVIRONMENTALISTS JOIN IN CONDEMNATION
 
DAKAR, Senegal, 17 March 1995 (GP) Popular singer Youssou N'Dour
from Senegal joined Greenpeace, Senegalese and South African
environmentalists today to denounce efforts undertaken by the US,
German, Australian, French and Canadian governments, as well as
the International Chamber of commerce and other industrial
organizations to undermine the international ban on the dumping
of hazardous wastes in developing countries.
 
The hazardous waste dumping ban agreed in March last year was
passed by a consensus decision of the Basel Convention Parties.
The decision prohibited all exports of hazardous wastes from the
industrialized countries of the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) to non-OECD countries for
final disposal (immediately) and for recycling (from 1998).   The
Ban decision was the culmination of 8 years of effort by African
nations, and the G-77 group of developing countries.  Senegal
played a leadership role in all of the Basel Convention
negotiations and particularly at the March 1994 conference in
support of the ban.  
 
This week in Dakar, Senegal sponsored an international workshop,
to discuss implementation of the ban.  However, leaked documents
obtained by Greenpeace revealed that the International Chamber of
Commerce representing waste exporting industries and certain
governments like the USA, the EU Commission and Australia
intended to use the workshop to sabotage the Basel Ban rather
than implement it.  
 
However, the effort to discredit the ban failed, despite the fact
that 80% of workshop speakers represented industries associated
with hazardous waste export and very few speakers at the meeting
represented governments of non-OECD countries.
 
At the close of the workshop, Denmark proposed that an
extraordinary meeting of the Basel Technical Working Group be
held in Copenhagen to resolve the questions over waste
definitions in order to implement the ban decision.
 
"For those seeking to sabotage the ban, the meeting was an utter
failure," said Dr. Kevin Stairs, toxics policy advisor for
Greenpeace.  "For Senegal, the rest of Africa, and the entire
world, the meeting was successful in that it began to grapple
with the details of implementing this historic decision."
 
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"Hazardous waste is not a commodity like bananas or rice," said
Mr. Abou Thiam of ENDA (Environment Development Action in the
Third World), "It is a disease which must be prevented at source
rather than spread around the globe."
 
"In South Africa, hazardous waste importation for recycling has
killed at least 3 persons outright and contaminated our country
irreparably," said Mr. Tebogo Phadu of EJNF, (Environmental
Justice Networking Forum) of South Africa.  "This type of
business is not development, it is a crime against humanity and
the environment."
 
Singer Youssou N'Dour of Dakar, who four years earlier had
written the song "Toxique" about toxic waste dumping on third
world countries, stated, "When I wrote my song years ago, the
fashion was dumping toxic wastes on the beaches and jungles of
Africa, now the fashion is to call the dumping 'recycling'.  But
once poisoned you cannot recycle human life, nor our precious
nature.  Therefore we must not relent to the powers that would
traffic in toxic waste.
 
ENDS
 
CONTACT: Marcelo Furtado, Greenpeace US, 202-319-2454
Jim Puckett, Kevin Stairs, Greenpeace International: Hotel Croix
de la Sud (Senegal): ++221 23 29 47
Mr. Abou Thiam, ENDA (Senegal):  ++ 221 22 42 29