 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Global waste meeting fails to break impasse: delegate
Nusa Dua, Indonesia (AFP) June 28, 2008 A conference in Indonesia on the international waste trade ended without breaking a 14-year impasse over the sale of hazardous waste across borders, the host's delegate said Saturday. The five-day conference on the resort island of Bali ended late Friday with a coalition of countries again stalling the ban proposal, Agus Purnomo said. "The problem is we have almost a dozen countries who are definitely against the ban amendment and they will not make a ban legal," Purnomo said. Rich countries such as the United States and Japan have opposed amending the Basel Convention, which governs the international movement of waste, to produce the ban. So far only 62 of the necessary 130 countries have ratified the proposed amendment, Purnomo said. Despite little movement over the ban issue, conference delegates declared they had agreed to "contribute to a new momentum to achieve objectives (of the Basel Convention)." Purnomo said the declaration was a breakthrough as it set the basis for countries to tackle the waste trade voluntarily through capacity building and recylcing programmes. "This was the re-energising consensus that we were able to achieve in Bali," he said. The issue of hazardous waste has taken on renewed urgency with the explosion in the number of mobile phones and computers, which has created new mountains of rubbish. There are now three billion mobile phones in the world, conference organisers said. Environmental activists have argued that tackling the emerging e-waste crisis is impossible without a ban, with countries regularly slipping past the current Basel architecture. "The US routinely allows massive exports of toxic e-waste to countries it knows prohibit such importation," Jim Puckett from the US-based Basel Action Network said in a statement earlier in the week. Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Share This Article With Planet Earth
Related Links Our Polluted World and Cleaning It Up
Lebanon's oil slick cleaned but headache continues
Beirut (AFP) June 25, 2008Two years after the worst oil spill in the east Mediterranean left thousands of tonnes of crude over three-quarters of Lebanon's coast, the beaches are almost all clean but the troubles continue. |
|
|
| The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2007 - SpaceDaily.AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by SpaceDaily on any Web page published or hosted by SpaceDaily. Privacy Statement |
del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
YahooMyWeb
Google
Facebook