One of the side events held at the “United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm (BRS) Conventions Triple Conference of Parties (COPs) 2021” on July 27 highlighted a promising possible evolution in the coverage of the Basel Convention, which may have broad global implications on the development of the modern circular economy, on human and environmental health as well as on the overall issue of North-South transboundary movements (TBMs) of waste.

In fact, Ghana and Switzerland – represented at the event by Dr. Sam Adu-Kumi of the Ghanaian Environmental Protection Agency as well as by Mr. Marco Buletti and Mr. Felix Wertli of the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment – presented a proposal submitted for discussion and possible approval at the June 2022 COP to amend the classification of e-waste in Annex II, VIII and IX of the Basel Convention. 

At present, only the transboundary movement of WEEE (“waste electrical or electronic equipment”, commonly also referred to as “e-waste”) classified as “hazardous” is covered by the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedures provided by the Basel Convention, and by its Ban Amendment concerning movements from OECD to non-OECD countries. The Swiss-Ghanaian proposal aims to extend such PIC procedures to all e-waste, regardless of its hazardous or non-hazardous nature.

This timely move would be beneficial on a number of levels: first of all, it would make the whole movement of e-waste more transparent and thus easier to measure and trace: according to the Global E-Waste Report 2020, out of the over 53 million metric tons of WEEE estimated to have been produced in 2019, about 80% were undocumented, and up to about 20% were moved internationally, mostly from developed countries to developing ones in Africa (such as, for instance, Ghana itself, home to Agbogbloshie, one of the world’s largest e-waste landfills) and Asia.

The proposed amendments to the relevant annexes of the Basel Convention imposing PIC procedures on all WEEE would also allow importing countries to refuse undesired WEEE and prompt exporting countries to ensure environmentally sound treatment.

Last but not least, this would ultimately encourage affected countries to build capacity to treat and recycle WEEE, leading to innovative and healthier practices - within either the formal or the informal sectors - and to higher recovery rates of the intrinsic value of WEEE raw materials, estimated at around 60 billion USD worth of, mostly, gold, aluminum, iron and copper in 2019.

The amendment proposal has already undergone a first round of consultations between January and March 2021, during which it gathered general support from stakeholders such as the EU, 11 individual parties, a signatory and various industrial association, who also provided constructive feedbacks on technical aspects ranging from the interpretation of terms like “electric”, “electronic”, “scrap”, “waste” or “not fully functional EEE” to the provisions applicable to cables and components.

Further discussions are set to take place in the months leading up to the face-to-face session of the COP15 in June 2022, in particular at the 12th session of the Basel Convention’s Open-ended Working Group (OEWG12).

The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal is an international treaty that, since entering into force in 1992, has governed how waste is moved around the world by introducing a crucial “notice and consent” regime. Its “Ban Amendment” became effective in late 2019 to further address the issues of hazardous waste steadily flowing into developing countries that would lack the capacity to properly treat it. The recent proposal from Ghana and Switzerland represents an additional, welcome evolution in the regime, which duly recognises the ever-growing volume and relevance of e-waste worldwide, as well as, de facto, the broad sustainable development and world order challenges it poses.

By Dr. Edoardo Monaco – Delegate to UNEP-BRS COPs July 26-30, 2021, GAD-CBCGDF Sustainability Leadership Platform

[The “GAD-CBCGDF Sustainability Leadership Platform” is a cooperation scheme established between the Globalisation and Development (GAD) Programme of Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College (BNU-HKBU UIC) and CBCGDF]

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