environment

Opinion

For a cleaner environment

Officials from member countries of the South Pacific Forum will meet in Fiji (hopefully for the last time) next month to finalise a convention proposing specific measures to deal with hazardous and radioactive wastes in the South Pacific region.

It is expected the nuts and bolts of the draft of the Regional Hazardous Wastes Convention would be thrashed out during this meeting.

Many of the outstanding issues have already been discussed, but a number of others are under discussion. Hence, the February 20-24 meeting at South Pacific Forum Secretariat headquarters is to finalise these so that the final draft can go before the South Pacific Forum in Papua New Guinea later this year.

Among other things, the meeting will discuss the scope of the proposed regional convention, general obligations by sig natories, notification procedures between parties, and liabili ties and compensation in the event of an accident or while transporting hazardous and radioactive wastes.

It is hoped the 15 South Pacific Forum members - Australia, the Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Western Samoa - will come away from the meeting with yet another major achievement in the form of a regional convention to protect the fragile environment of the region s island mem bers.

What exactly is this regional convention? The proposed con vention is complex and comprehensive. Essentially, it propos es a ban on the import of hazardous and radioactive wastes generated, in countries outside the region, to the South Pacific. Dumping of these wastes in the sea will also be banned.

Originally prepared by the Papua New Guinea government, the regional convention also proposes to control and regulate trans-boundary movement and management of hazardous wastes. Importation of“non-environmentally friendly ” or “dirty technologies” to be used for treatment, recycling and disposal of hazardous or radioactive wastes is to be restricted, too.

As well as encouraging the clean-up of contaminated sites and polluted environments, the draft addresses whether tran sit of such cargo should be allowed through the region or only under controlled conditions.

Provisions will be made to facilitate the assessment and review of hazardous waste products and technologies, so that specific chemicals could be banned in the South Pacific region. Promoting clean technology and the capacity to iden

tify dirty technology are also included in the proposed con vention.

Why is a regional convention necessary?

International waste trade is a multi-million dollar business.

According to available estimates, industrialised countries attempted to ship, and in some cases succeeded in exporting, more than 163 million tonnes of waste between 1986 and 1990.

Of this, at least 10 million tonnes ended up in developing countries as materials for recycling.

At a time when industrialised countries are suffering from donor fatigue, perceived revenue from international trade in wastes can appear irresistible. As is the case with many devel oping countries where the get-it-now-pay-later syndrome is chronic, little consideration or no thought is given to conse quences for which future generations must pay.

Foreign companies involved in international waste trade, usually from industrialised countries, are under pressure at home not to pollute their environments. In many cases, the obvious site for dumping are developing countries, where often little or no safeguard is in place by way of domestic leg islation or international convention. After all, just about every one is convinced that developing countries can take anything that has the smell of instant cash.

In the absence of a legally binding mechanism such as a treaty or a regional convention, island countries in the region could easily become dumping grounds for hazardous and toxic wastes from around the world.

It is with this fear in mind that Forum leaders urged an appropriate regional convention be negotiated to protect the special vulnerability of some of its members against the whims of unscrupulous dealers in international wastes.

The leaders also urged the regional convention complement relevant global regimes, such as the Basel Convention on the Control of Trans-boundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal.

To accommodate this, the Basel Convention secretariat, the International Atomic Energy Agency, environmental group Greenpeace, and Suva-based Pacific Conference of Churches attended as observers the first negotiation in Suva almost a year ago.

The idea for a regional convention goes back to the Nauru Forum in 1993. There, Forum leaders endorsed the proposal and directed the Secretariat to convene a meeting by March 1994 so that technical discussions and negotiations could begin “with the aim of concluding a regional convention by the 1995 Forum meeting”. What will be discussed at the

From

Alfred Sasako

at the Forum Secretariat