Prepared for the UNCTAD meeting held in Bangkok
12-19 February, 2000

Greenpeace/Basel Action Network
February 11, 2000
Bangkok

Greenpeace Keizersgracht 176 1016 DW Amsterdam The Netherlands www.greenpeace.org/~toxics/toxfreeasia/ marcelo.furtado@dialb.greenpeace.org

Basel Action Network 1827 39th Ave E., Seattle Washington, 98112 United States of America www.ban.org jpuckett@ban.org

UNCTAD'S ROLE IN FOSTERING TOXIC WASTE TRADE

Contents:
Introduction
Paper Play
Conclusion
BUSINESS AS USUAL Case Studies of Hazardous Waste Dumping in Asia
CAMBODIA (Mercury wastes)
INDIA, CHINA Ships-for-scrap from various countries
PHILIPPINES (Medical wastes)
INDIA, PHILIPPINES, THAILAND Lead wastes to Asia
CONCLUSION
OUR DEMANDS

Introduction

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) is an intergovernmental organisation under the United Nations whose professed mission is to assist less industrialized nations to progress sustainably. Unfortunately, due to its focus on trade, the agency has been steered by corporate interests rather than by the priorities of less industrialised countries. A case in point is UNCTAD's role in promoting the dumping of hazardous wastes from industrialized nations onto the shores of poorer countries.

For decades, less industrialized countries in Asia, Africa and South America have been used as a dumping ground for the toxic wastes from countries in the industrialised North. This practice has had serious effects on the health of the environment and people of these countries.

Recognizing the dangers of the trade in toxic wastes, the international community led by the G-77 countries and China, succeeded in strengthening the Basel Convention (on the Control and Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal). Against great odds, in 1994, this group secured a ban on the export of hazardous wastes from the rich industrialized countries of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to the industrializing non-OECD nations.

This decision, popularly known as the Basel Ban, is hailed as a victory for both the environment and international justice, and is considered the most important achievement of the Basel Convention.

Ever since the passage of the Basel Ban, UNCTAD has become a willing tool of a powerful minority of industries and industrial nations (USA, Canada, Australia and Japan) who seek to keep the gates of Asia, Africa and South America open to receive their poisonous wastes. It is highly ironic and suspect that UNCTAD has made considerable efforts to suggest means of undermining the Basel Ban.

Even more disturbing is the realisation that UNCTAD embarks on this effort with the funding of transnational corporations that stand to profit from the international trade in hazardous waste. UNCTAD then uses this funding to produce self-serving "case studies", research projects and papers, which are then put on United Nations letterhead, thus lending these corporate funded documents a false sense of objectivity and legitimacy.

All of these UNCTAD papers repeat a claim that the Basel Ban is an unjustified trade barrier and moreover hurts the environment and the economy.

Paper Play
At a workshop in Dakar, Senegal in 1995 on the subject of the implementation of the Basel Ban Decision which was sponsored largely by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), UNCTAD was showcased by the organisers of the workshop. There they presented a paper on the totality of the global recycling trade and implied that it might be halted under the Basel Ban. This was a divisive scare tactic as the Basel Ban was clearly only designed to deal with hazardous wastes. Fortunately, the Basel Parties were not swayed by the tactic and later that year turned the Basel Ban decision into a proposed amendment that is now gathering the necessary ratifications to enter into force.

But this second consensus decision by over 80 countries (at the time), still did not deter UNCTAD from continuing to serve as a UN front for big business. The latest effort has been an UNCTAD project entitled "The Creation of Multi-stakeholder Advisory Panels on Environmentally Sound and Economically Viable Management of Secondary Lead in India and the Philippines." The project is a thinly veiled attempt to produce a case study to establish the premise that importation of used car batteries from countries like the United States and Canada is good for the Philippine and Indian environment.

The stated focus of the project includes reviewing "lead supply and demand in India and the Philippines and the effectiveness and efficiency of trade restrictions and supportive measures to enhance sustainable lead management." Not surprisingly, among the donors of the project are Canada (front country waging war against the Basel Ban) and the International Lead Management Center, which is an industry association of transnational lead mining companies such as Asarco and Pasminco.

UNCTAD papers based on the aforementioned project elaborate strong criticisms of the Basel Ban. The most recently available paper was presented in October of last year at yet another workshop sponsored by Canada and the United States under the auspices of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This paper, authored by Mr. Ulrich Hoffman, exhorts the Philippine government to work to defeat or weaken the ban. "Unless the Philippine government pursues a pro-active strategy aimed at limiting the distortionary effects of the trade restrictions of the Basel Ban Amendment on scrap batteries, the objectives of the Basel Convention cannot be met and sustainable natural resource management will be compromised."

The paper even suggests that unless loopholes (and goes on to propose two possibilities) are put into the full ban so that countries like the United States are allowed to export hazardous wastes to the Philippines, "arbitrary and unjustifiable trade restrictions" will result.

Conclusion
It is unacceptable that UNCTAD does not respect international law. With their attack on the Basel Convention, we have a situation where one arm of the United Nations is attacking another (UNEP) to the detriment of a decision taken by the global community to protect the global environment and human rights. It is unacceptable that UNCTAD is allowing itself to be used as a tool to do the bidding of a very small minority of countries that see the Basel Ban as a threat to their industry's right to export hazardous waste to wherever it pleases. It is unacceptable that UNCTAD utilizes industry funding to accomplish their mission of allowing a free trade in toxic waste.

Despite the unrelenting efforts of UNCTAD and its lobbying partners from the industry, the world community has repeatedly reaffirmed the correctness of the Basel Ban decision. However, because more time and effort is being spent to constantly defend against the attacks to the Basel Ban, little energy has been expended on implementing the Ban. The result: Hazardous waste dumping on Asia continues as usual.

Greenpeace and Basel Action Network believe that as long as there are easy options for getting rid of toxic wastes, companies that benefit from generating it in the first place will never take responsibility for their safe disposal. Second, closing the easy options forces companies to look for means to manufacture their products without generating the toxic wastes.

BUSINESS AS USUAL
Case Studies of Hazardous Waste Dumping in Asia

1) CAMBODIA (Mercury wastes)
Mercury wastes from Taiwan

Over a year ago, workers at the Cambodian port of Sihanoukville unloaded about 3,000 tons of highly toxic mercury-tainted waste from Taiwan. The waste originated from the Formosa Plastics Group (FPG), one of the world's biggest manufacturers of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Ship and port documents declared the waste cargo as "cement cake," subsequent tests conducted by various agencies showed concentrations of mercury at least 20,000 times above internationally accepted limits. The toxic wastes, initially dumped on open ground 15 kilometers outside Sihanoukville were later packed into containers following the deaths of two workers who had direct contact with the waste. Four others died as a result of the riots and mass hysteria which gripped the town near where the waste was dumped. In March 1998, FPG was forced to take out the waste. The company proposed to send the wastes first to the United States and then to Europe for disposal. But communities in these countries refused to host the toxic wastes. The company has now returned the mercury wastes to Taiwan where it will wait until a suitable technology to deal with it is developed.

2) INDIA, CHINA
Ships-for-scrap from various countries

Over the last two decades, the highly hazardous industry of breaking down old ships has relocated from the industrialized North to Asia due to the laxer environmental and worker safety regulatory infrastructure in the Asian nations. China and India are the most popular destinations for end-of-life ships. These ships, most of which were built in the 1970s, contain hazardous substances such as asbestos, heavy-metal based paints and toxic antifouling paints containing Tri Butyl Tin. These substances are released to the environment and to the workers during the process of dismantling.

The export of hazardous ships-for-scrap is a clear case of toxic waste trade disguised as trade in recyclable steel. Rich countries obviously see exports as a means of ridding themselves of the environmental and worker safety liabilities that may arise out of breaking the ship at home and disposing the hazardous wastes that remain in a manner considered legal in their countries.

The Alang shipbreaking yard in Gujarat, India is one of the world's largest and breaks nearly one ship every day. Due to the poor safety conditions and the inherent hazardous nature of the industry, accidents and fires in the shipyard claim at least one worker's life every day. Investigations by Greenpeace and Basel Action Network revealed appalling working conditions and elevated levels of pollution in and around the shipbreaking yards in India. The conditions in China were found to be no better.

3) PHILIPPINES (Medical wastes)
Medical wastes from Japan

In December 1999, Philippine authorities seized 122 forty-foot containers carrying infectious medical wastes from Japan. The consignment was disguised as used plastic scrap for recycling purposes. The waste shipment exported by Japanese company Nisso Ltd consisted of needles for intravenous injections, medical rubber hose and tubes, used adult and baby diapers, used sanitary napkins, discarded intravenous syringes used in blood letting and dextrose, garments, and bandages. Also found in the containers were electronic equipment, PVC plastic materials mixed with industrial and household wastes, styropor packaging materials, sacks, plastic sheets, PVC pipes, plastic packaging materials, paper, plastic food packaging materials, and other hospital wastes.

Following public outrage over the shipment, the Japanese government agreed to ship the 2,700 tons of garbage back to Japan in early January. Subsequent investigations in Japan reveal that medical waste exports from Japan to the Philippines was a customary practice. The latest episode represented only the tip of the iceberg.

4) INDIA, PHILIPPINES, THAILAND
Lead wastes to Asia

Before 1997, Australia was among the top exporters of scrap lead batteries to the Philippines, shipping an estimated total of 9,441 tons of battery scrap to the Southeast Asian nation from January 1994 to May 1996. Lead wastes, including from Australia, the Netherlands and the USA, have routinely entered Asia, through India, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand. In 1997, Thailand received 96,200 kilograms of lead waste and scrap from Australia, Japan and the Netherlands. Meanwhile in India, 24 shipping containers of imported battery scrap still lie abandoned at the container yard near New Delhi.

UNCTAD has sought to defend these exports by claiming that trade should not be denied to factories capable of processing these wastes in an environmentally sound manner, and that such facilities do exist. However, repeated investigations by Greenpeace have vindicated our stand that the processing of toxic wastes is inherently environmentally unsound.

A March 1997 report on Indian Lead Ltd, a lead importer and recycler with Government-approved facilities, exposes the poor environmental track record of even "state-of-the-art" facilities. Samples of wastewater from the company's lead recycling facility in Calcutta, contained levels of cadmium (a highly toxic metal) that were 10 times higher than was permissible in Europe. Lead levels in the same sample were more than 600 times above legal Indian limits.

A similar expose of the environmental performance of Philippine Recyclers Inc (PRI), the leading importer and recycler in the Philippines, included findings about the serious lead contamination in the soil, vegetation and river sediment taken from around the PRI factory. The company has also been caught illegally dumping the toxic wastes from its factory in several open dumpsites near agricultural fields. A study of lead contamination among children living around the PRI facility, by Greenpeace and experts from the University of the Philippines found that the blood lead levels of children living near PRI were consistently higher than levels reported among other children and the child street vendors in Metro Manila.

A recent study published by UNCTAD makes a case for PRI to be allowed to import lead battery scrap.



CONCLUSION

For most of this century, governments have concentrated on developing a set of international trade rules that allow for the free flow of goods (including hazardous wastes). Even while world trade bodies such as the UNCTAD and WTO are busy lobbying for changes to Government trade policy and practice, e.g. through the reduction of tariffs, removal of quotas, or seeking exceptions to hazardous waste trade bans, they have consistently ignored market failures - such as those that allow concentration of extremely hazardous activities and wastes in places that are least able to handle them safely.

OUR DEMANDS:

1. The UNCTAD should cease to promote the exports of hazardous wastes to less industrialized countries.

2. The UNCTAD should strive to lead less industrialized countries away from the destructive path taken by the industrialized North, and should put in place infrastructure to promote clean and sustainable industries rather than assist them in attempts to achieve self-sufficiency in the generation and processing of toxic wastes.

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