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Bali, Indonesia: The United Nations on Wednesday said that a lack of resources and political will are hampering efforts to halt the flow of hazardous waste from rich countries to the world's poorest nations.
The warning comes as delegates from as many as 170 countries meet on the Indonesian island of Bali to discuss how they can strengthen the UN-administered Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, adopted in 1989. The meeting ends tomorrow.
Convention Executive Secretary Katharina Kummer Peiry acknowledged that the dumping of everything from hazardous chemicals to electronic waste in poor countries is a growing problem.
She blamed it mostly on the inability of poor nations to finance better enforcement and monitoring of waste coming into their ports.
"The problem lies in the lack of interest and lack of resources on the issue at all levels," Peiry said.
The extent of the problem was illustrated in 2006, when hundreds of tonnes of toxic waste were dumped around Ivory Coast's main city of Abidjan, killing at least 10 people.
The waste came from a tanker chartered by the multibillion-dollar Dutch commodities trading company Trafigura Beheer BV, which turned to Africa after disposal costs in Amsterdam were deemed too expensive.
The ship found a local company in Ivory Coast that agreed to dispose of the waste. But it lacked proper facilities and allegedly dumped the waste around the city at night.
Trafigura has agreed to pay 152 million euros (Dh868.3 million) to the Ivorian government but has denied responsibility.
Critics say the case highlighted the limitations of the convention. Although it requires a country to seek the consent of another government when exporting waste and allows a country to ban the import of waste, it stops short of an outright export ban.
An amendment calling for a ban was first proposed in 1995, but not enough of the convention's 170 member countries have ratified it. A ban is likely to be debated in Bali today when environmental ministers begin discussing the convention.
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