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The Secretariat of the Basel Convention

Website: www.basel.int/convention/secretariat.html
Keywords: Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes; United National Environmental Programme (UNEP); Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade; Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants; secretariat
The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal is the most comprehensive global environmental treaty on hazardous and other wastes. It has 172 parties and aims to protect human health and the environment against the adverse effects resulting from the generation, management, transboundary movements and disposal of hazardous and other wastes.[1]

As with other multilateral conventions, the Basel Convention is a living agreement with oversight by the Parties with the support of a Secretariat. The meeting of the Conference of the Parties, held every two years, is a platform to review the progresses made on the implementation of the Convention and to provide continues guidance on policies. Although the Secretariat of the Basel Convention is hosted by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), which provides administrative support to the Secretariat, its governing structure is independent of any other organization.

Among the functions of the Secretariat enumerated on Article 16 of the Basel Convention are:
(a) to arrange the meetings of the Parties;

(b) to prepare and transmit reports based on the information received by the Parties;

(c) to prepare reports on its activities carried out in implementation of its functions under the Convention in order to present to the meetings of the Parties;

(d) To ensure the necessary coordination with relevant international bodies, and in particular to enter into such administrative and contractual arrangements as may be required for the effective discharge of its functions;

(e) To communicate with focal points and competent authorities;

(f) To compile information concerning authorized national sites and facilities of Parties available for the disposal of their hazardous wastes and other wastes and to circulate this information among Parties;

(g) To receive and convey information from and to Parties on:
  • sources of technical assistance and training;
  • available technical and scientific know-how;
  • availability of resources with a view to assist Parties, upon request, in such areas as:
  • the handling of the notification system of this Convention;
  • the management of hazardous wastes and other wastes;
  • environmentally sound technologies relating to hazardous wastes and other wastes; such as low and non-waste technology;
  • the assessment of disposal capabilities and sites;
  • the monitoring of hazardous wastes and other wastes; and
  • emergency responses.
(h) To provide Parties, upon request, with information on consultants or consulting firms having the necessary technical competence in the field, which can assist them to examine a notification for a transboundary movement, the concurrence of a shipment of hazardous wastes or other wastes with the relevant notification, and/or the fact that the proposed disposal facilities for hazardous wastes or other wastes are environmentally sound, when they have reason to believe that the wastes in question will not be managed in an environmentally sound manner. Any such examination would not be at the expense of the Secretariat;

(i) To assist Parties upon request in their identification of cases of illegal traffic and to circulate immediately to the Parties concerned any information it has received regarding illegal traffic;

(j) To co-operate with Parties and with relevant and competent international organizations and agencies in the provision of experts and equipment for the purpose of rapid assistance to States in the event of an emergency situation;
Recent developments: Decision on cooperation and coordination between the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions

Initiated in 2005, parties to the Basel Convention on the transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal, the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, agreed to enhance the cooperation and coordination between these three Conventions. Decisions SC-2/15 of the Conference of the Parties to the Stockholm Convention, decision RC-3/8 adopted by the Conference of the Parties to the Rotterdam Conventions and decision VIII/8 of the Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention began this process and agreed to the establishment of an Ad Hoc Joint Working Group to prepare joint recommendations on enhanced cooperation and coordination among the three conventions.[2]

In April 2008 the Ad Hoc Joint Working Group adopted a recommendation to be transmitted to the Conference of the Parties to each of the three Conventions[3]. The Recommendation is structured as follows:

  1. Organizational issues in the field
    1. Coordination at the national level
    2. Programmatic cooperation in the field
    3. Coordinated use of regional offices and centers
  2. Technical issues
    1. National reporting
    2. Compliance/Non-compliance mechanisms
    3. Cooperation on technical and scientific issues
  3. Information management and public awareness issues
    1. Joint outreach and public awareness
    2. Information exchange/clearing-house mechanism on health and environmental impacts
    3. Joint input into other processes
  4. Administrative issues
    1. Joint managerial functions
    2. Resource mobilization
    3. Financial management and audit functions
    4. Joint services
  5. Decision making
    1. Coordinated meetings
    2. Extraordinary meetings of the Conference of the Parties
    3. Review arrangement
Through separate decisions at the subsequent meetings of the Conference of the Parties of Basel (Decision IX/10);[4] Rotterdam (Decision RC 4/11);[5] and Stockholm (Decision SC 4/34)[6] adopted the recommendations of the Ad Hoc Joint Working Group and agreed to an Extraordinary meeting of the Conference of the Parties of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions to be held in February 2010.

***

The process of coordination and cooperation between the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions is a pioneering development in international environmental governance. The Secretariats of some Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) were developed to provide a continuous assessment by the Parties on the status of the implementation of these agreements. The idea is that such agreements would be seen as living instruments ; that is adaptable to the needs of the Parties in order to overcome the challenges for its implementation.

The meetings of the Parties of some larger MEAs have become comparable to the governing body of some international organizations in relation to the number of states present, the mandates given and the budget administered by the Secretariat. As a result, the Secretariat of Multilateral Environmental Agreements became de facto international organizations, even though some Secretariats do not have the human capacity and the financial resources to act as so.

On one hand the fragmentation of environmental topics in international governance led to advanced coordination in some areas like ozone depletion and climate change . Thanks to the efforts of its Secretariat, parties to the Montreal Protocol organized twenty one Meetings of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol, adopting numerous decisions on the subject. In another example, the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) organized 15 meetings of the Conference of the parties adopting important decisions, which includes the Kyoto Protocol. Without the autonomy of these Secretariats it is unlikely that the Parties to these agreements would be able to create such an important group of decisions. On the other hand however some important topics were disfavored and without having reached a consensus, they became more and more dependable on bilateral funding or on multilateral mechanisms such as the Global Environmental Facility (the GEF) to implement the decision of the meetings of their Parties.

Although some may view the process of coordination and cooperation between the three conventions as an indication that the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) is going to emerge at the end of the day with additional power in order to become a specialized agency, it is difficult to say whether the process of coordination and cooperation between the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions is a reversal of the fragmented approach. In a certain sense, this process is still very limited and guided by pragmatism:
  • The Secretariats of these three conventions are (mostly) located in Geneva;
  • These three conventions are complementary in relation to their approach towards chemicals;
  • It would be more cost effective for Parties, especially parties in developing countries, to comply with the obligations of the three conventions jointly (nomination of focal points, reporting, participation at the meeting of the Parties ).
The next steps of this process of coordination will be decided on the Extraordinary Conference of the Parties to the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm that will take place in Bali, Indonesia in February 2010. Meanwhile the Secretariats are working closely together with countries in order to identify opportunities of synergies in the national level, bringing a higher degree of coherence to the international policy on chemicals and hazardous wastes management.

Tarcisio Hardman Reis
Phd Candidate, University of Lausanne


August 2009

Footnotes:

1 Information about the Basel Convention is available at http://www.basel.int/index.html.

2 Information on the Ad Hoc Joint Working Group is available at htt://ahjwg.chem.unep.ch.

3 UNEP, "Recommendation of the Ad hoc Joint Working Group on Enhancing Cooperation and Coordination Among the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Convention", REPORT OF THE AD HOC JOINT WORKING GROUP ON ENHANCING COOPERATION AND COORDINATION AMONG THE BASEL, ROTTERDAM AND STOCKHOLM CONVENTION ON THE WORK OF ITS THIRD MEETING, Annex I, 9, UNEP/FAO/CHW/RC/POPS/JWG.3/3 available at http://ahjwg.chem.unep.ch/documents/3rdmeeting/ahjwg03_03_REP.pdf.

4 UNEP, REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE OF THE PARTIES TO THE BASEL CONVENTION ON THE CONTROL OF TRANSBOUNDARY MOVEMENTS OF HAZARDOUS WASTES AND THEIR DISPOSAL ON ITS NINTH MEETING, UNEP/CHW.9/39, available at http://www.basel.int/meetings/frsetmain.php.

5 UNEP, REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE OF THE PARTIES TO THE ROTTERDAM CONVENTION ON THE PRIOR INFORMED CONSENT PROCEDURE FOR CERTAIN HAZARDOUS CHEMICALS AND PESTICIDES IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE ON THE WORK OF ITS FOURTH MEETING, UNEP/FAO/RC/COP.4/24, available at http://www.pic.int/cops/Reports/Z36)/English/K0842462%20PIC%20COP%204%20REPORT.pdf.

6 UNEP, REPORT OF THE CONFERENCE OF THE PARTIES OF THE STOCKHOLM CONVENTION ON PERSISTENT ORGANIC POLLUTANTS ON THE WORK OF ITS FOURTH MEETING, UNEP/POPS/COP.4/38, available at http://chm.pops.int/Portals/0/Repository/COP4/UNEP-POPS-COP.4-38.English.pdf.


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