Basel Convention

Basel Convention, by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=4012 / CC BY SA 3.0

#Pollution
#Environmental_treaties
#Waste_treaties
#Chemical_safety
#Treaties_concluded_in_1989
#Treaties_entered_into_force_in_1992
#1992_in_the_environment
#Hazardous_waste
#Treaties_of_Afghanistan
#Treaties_of_Albania
Basel Convention, is an international treaty that was designed to reduce the movements of hazardous waste between nations, and specifically to prevent transfer of hazardous waste from developed to less developed countries （LDCs）.
It does not, however, address the movement of radioactive waste.
The convention is also intended to minimize the rate and toxicity of wastes generated, to ensure their environmentally sound management as closely as possible to the source of generation,
and to assist LDCs in environmentally sound management of the hazardous and other wastes they generate.
Parties to the Convention The convention was opened for signature on 21 March 1989, and entered into force on 5 May 1992.
As of October 2018, 199 states and the SAARS are parties to the convention.
Haiti and the United States have signed the convention but not ratified it.
Following a petition urging action on the issue signed by more than a million people around the world, most of the world's countries, but not the United States,
agreed in May 2019 to an amendment of the Basel Convention to include plastic waste as regulated material.
Although the United States is not a party to the treaty, export shipments of plastic waste from the United States are now "criminal traffic as soon as the ships get on the high seas," according to the Basel Action Network （BAN）,
and carriers of such shipments may face liability, because the transportation of plastic waste is prohibited in just about every other country.
With the tightening of environmental laws （for example, RCRA） in developed nations in the 1970s, disposal costs for hazardous waste rose dramatically.
At the same time, globalization of shi...