The Basel ban will restrict the movement of hazardous waste (of which scrap forms a part) from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries to non-OECD countries. It could be particularly unkind for countries like Malaysia, the Philippines, Venezuela, Kenya and Nigeria, which have no domestic mining resources.
These countries are likely to be fierce negotiators at the last round of talks scheduled for October this year in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. At issue are the secondary lead and zinc industries in several developing countries that rely heavily on imported scrap to sustain burgeoning demand.
Outside the polite ambience of official negotiations, accusations are being traded with more energy than hazardous waste ever was. Sampler: the Basle Convention is a great conspiracy of the developed countries to deny cheap raw material to developing countries.
The pro-conventioners, of course, think otherwise. The Basel Convention, they believe, will prevent the dumping of toxic waste from the developed countries under the guise of recyclables.
These reactions are at the two extremes of the current debate. So how valid and how damaging is the impending Basel ban?
Understand, first, the circumstances that led up to it. It has its roots in protests from global environmental groups over the dumping of hazardous waste from the developed countries to underdeveloped countries (part of this has been discussed in In the dump, which appears on this page). This lead to the convention of transboundary movement of hazardous waste and their disposal in 1989 at Basel, Switzerland.
Under this convention, various forms of wastes were categorised and developed countries were required to register and notify movement of waste to underdeveloped countries. The Basel Accord, which took effect in 1992 and was signed by 100 countries, did, however, allow the movement of waste for recycling.
This didnt help greatly; the old accusations of dumping by the developed world persisted. In 1994, to strengthen the 1992 accord, a Conference of Parties (COP) to the Basel Convention adopted a consensus on the decision to ban the export of hazardous substances for recycling with effect from January 1, 1998.
Developing countries are unhappy because they see the ban as discriminatory. This is because the Basel Convention does not prevent the movement of hazardous waste within OECD nations, only to non-OECD countries. The logic: OECD countries have the technology and the laws to deal with the waste in an environmentally sound manner.
Although the environmentally damaging effects of dumping toxic waste can never be in dispute, the developing world does have cause to worry. Some of these recyclables are raw materials for them. Their economies could be crippled if they do not have access to this waste.
Take the case of lead. Lead-acid batteries, whole or crushed, are on list A, which includes substances defined as hazardous and are to be banned (to understand why, read Every breath you take, on this page). The total production of lead by the secondary sector, using scrap as raw material, will soon be more than that from the primary sector. This has already happened in the West, where the contribution of the secondary sector to total lead production was 53 per cent in 1995.
The contribution of the secondary sector becomes even more important given the fact that the production of lead through ore has not increased over the past 30 years. The
primary sector contributed 2.7 million tonne of lead in 1965 compared with 2.8 million tonne in 1995.
What will countries that have to rely completely on imported scrap do? They already have their answer. The impact of the
proposed ban is being felt even before it comes into force; lead exports to south-east Asia have already fallen. In 1991, USA, which decided to stay out of the Basel Convention, exported 18.7 million tonne of lead scrap.
By 1995, the figure had dropped to 11.2 million tonne.
Even India has to rely on the secondary sector to bridge the gap in its demand. In 1996-97, the secondary sector contributed 40,926 tonne of lead compared with 28,812 tonne contributed by the primary sector. A number of these secondary players rely on imported lead scrap to keep their factories running. With the demand and supply gap expected to widen, the country would be denied an important source of lead.
On the other hand, what will the OECD countries do with the extra scrap? If these countries do not dispose of the scrap, the option left to them is to develop their own secondary lead industry.
This is where the problem starts. The first question that comes to mind is that are these developed countries really concerned about the environment in underdeveloped countries? Not if we remember the results of the Earth Summit. So, are there ulterior motives to the entire exercise?
Recycling of any kind is a labour-intensive activity that some of the less-developed countries are able to manage at very low cost. Developed countries cannot afford to do this unless the recyclables are available at a much cheaper price.
Take the case of zinc ash, which, after protracted debate, has just been shifted from the A list to the B list. Secondary producers in India are able to pay around $700 for one tonne of zinc ash compared to $475 paid by the European markets.
If countries like India are denied the scrap, then the price of scrap would drop and developed countries will be able to develop their own secondary industry. These very countries will then supply value-added products to less developed countries, says G C Kanunga, managing director, Alcobex Metals Ltd.
To prove his point says M R Garg, managing director, Tirupati Chemical, I will import used batteries, take out the lead in the most environment-friendly way and export the lead and still make a profit.
But there is another side to the argument. Toxic waste regulations have become increasingly more stringent in the West. Environmentalists claim that the cost of disposing off waste in the developed countries is very high. It is much more profitable to sell this waste to under-developed countries under the guise of recyclables, make a little money and save the cost of waste disposal.
That is why the argument that the ban be restricted to hazardous waste trade between OECD and non-OECD countries is so important. If a non-OECD country can do the recycling as well as any of the OECD countries, then why should it be denied that?
A round table on the implications of the Basel Convention held by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) reached the conclusion that, It would be more appropriate if developing countries are given the right to decide the waste that it wants to import and have the capability to process it in an environmentally sound manner.
Another definite consequence of the ban would be that the countries that rely on imported scrap will be forced to look at exploiting their own natural resources. This will not only lead to pressure on natural resources but some of the ore may be of poor quality and lead to more environmental pollution.
So what stand should the government of India take in the final round of negotiations at Kuala Lumpur? The CII round table conference reached a politically correct answer. India, it said, should support the Basel Convention decision on prohibiting transboundary movement of all hazardous waste destined for final disposal from one country to another but not ban the export of hazardous waste destined for recycling or recovery operations.
This does not address the core of the issue: how can importing countries ensure this difference? The US has its own answer. The US environment protection agency (EPA) has issued a final rule to declassify scrap metal from the solid waste category, paving the way for its export. This could explain why it has opted to stay out of one of the most significant global environmental agreements of the century.
