Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal

The Basel Convention was adopted on 22 March 1989 and entered into force on 5 May 1992, administered by the United Nations Environment Programme through the Basel Convention Secretariat. Its stated objective, in the Secretariat's own words, is to protect human health and the environment against the adverse effects of hazardous wastes.

The Convention starts before the waste exists. Rather than only governing hazardous waste once it has been produced, it commits parties to reducing the generation of hazardous waste at source and to promoting environmentally sound management wherever that waste is generated, disposed of or transported. Reduction and sound handling are treated as one continuous obligation rather than two separate programmes.

Its second principle is proximity. Hazardous and other wastes should, as far as is compatible with environmentally sound management, be disposed of in the state where they were generated. The Convention discourages exporting the problem, which is a different thing from banning export.

The control mechanism is consent. Movements of hazardous waste across borders are permitted only with the prior written consent of the importing state and of any transit states, so no country can become a dumping ground without its knowledge and agreement. Trade in hazardous wastes with states that have not ratified the Convention is restricted, which is what stops parties routing shipments through non-parties to escape the controls. Illegal traffic is treated as a wrong to be prevented and remedied: parties commit to preventing it and to cooperating so that the responsible party re-imports the shipment or otherwise puts it right.

The limit of that design is recorded elsewhere in this bank. Because Basel regulates and permits the hazardous-waste trade under consent conditions rather than prohibiting it, African states negotiated the Bamako Convention in 1991 as their own flat ban on importing hazardous and radioactive waste into the continent. The two records belong together. The complete Basel text is published at the official Convention source.