Hazards unchecked

India's failure to ratify the Basel Convention on the cross-border movement of toxic waste continues to make it a major destination of international trade in hazardous waste.

V. SRIDHAR

INDIA ceased to be the leading destination for hazardous waste after the Supreme Court in May 1997 imposed a blanket ban on all such imports. However, the country's failure to ratify the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal has meant the continuance of weak monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, which could eventually lead to the re-emergence of the permissive system that prevailed before the ban.

Those who favour a worldwide ban on the cross-border movement of hazardous waste say that the international trade in toxic waste follows the path of least resistance; it targets countries in which labour laws are weak, the enforcement of environmental laws is inefficient and verification procedures are not foolproof. Organisations such as the Basel Action Network (BAN), an international network of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and environmental activists, maintain that the flow of toxic waste is in the direction of developing countries that have a thriving market for cheap, recycled raw materials.

India, Indonesia, the Philippines and China remain the major destinations of toxic waste. According to environmental activists, lead ash, battery cell scrap, asbestos and polychlorinated biphenyles (PCBs) are dumped at Indian ports. Greenpeace International has reported the import of toxic waste into India even after the May 1997 ban.

RAVI AGARWAL
Outside the office of the Ministry of Environment and Forests in New Delhi, a protest on April 17, 1997 against the import of hazardous waste.

ALTHOUGH the Basel Ban did not explicitly take note of ship-breaking as a form of transnational movement of hazardous waste, it is of special concern to India. Alang in Gujarat, which has the world's largest ship-breaking yard, is a haven for "toxic ships". According to BAN, the "virtually lawless operations" at Alang result in the death of, on an average, one worker a day and pose serious health hazards for the 40,000 persons employed there.

According to Ravi Agarwal, the director of Srishti, a New Delhi-based NGO and an affiliate of the BAN, issues relating to ship-breaking "need to be pushed within the Basel system". The recent guidelines from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), which seek to ban the import of ships for breaking, are a positive development. Sources close to the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests told Frontline that the Ministry was likely to notify the guidelines, which are now only recommendatory. Ravi Agarwal says the Gujarat State Pollution Control Board and the Gujarat Ecology Commission have succumbed to pressure from "vested and entrenched interests" and avoided an aggressive approach towards the ship-breaking units at Alang.

SINCE 1989, when the Convention was initiated, African countries, some of them victims of large-scale dumping of hazardous waste, have played a significant role in establishing an international regime to control the transnational movement of toxic waste. However, India, which put on its best face at the Convention and was among the first nations to legislate against hazardous waste imports, did little to establish monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. The failure to curb such imports has prevented it from playing a substantive role at the Basel Convention. Even at the recent Conference of Parties to the Basel Convention at Kuching in Malaysia, India did not take an initiative to ensure the early enforcement of the Convention (Frontline, April 3, 1998).

It was only in 1995 that the Government notified the import rules under the legislation that was passed in 1989. There was further delay, until the Exim Policy was announced in 1996, in defining "hazardous" substances. However, no guidelines were given to the implementing agencies, including pollution control boards and Customs and port authorities.

Even as other countries took preventive measures, the 40-million-tonne trade increasingly targeted countries such as India with weak control regimes. According to the BAN, between 1992 and 1994 India's lead waste imports increased from 1.4 million kg to 58 million kg, plastics from 18 million kg to 24 million kg, zinc waste (much of which is contaminated by lead residue) from 50 million kg to 71 million kg and copper waste from 84 million kg to 145 million kg. A large proportion of these imports came from the United States, Germany and Australia. The Indian system was so slack that, while the Government said in 1995 that it had given permits to only seven importers, Srishti claimed that it had identified 151 importers dealing in hazardous waste.

While official figures put the quantum of lead imports at 8,000 tonnes in 1995, Srishti contended that published Customs data showed imports of more than 50,000 tonnes. Similarly, while the Government claimed that only 20,000 tonnes of zinc ash was imported in 1995, Srishti put the figure at 70,000 tonnes. Srishti presented its arguments before the Delhi High Court. In 1996, the court issued an injunction on the import of hazardous waste. The Supreme Court ban came after the court heard a petition filed by the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in 1995 against Bharat Zinc, a Bhopal-based company importing zinc waste for recycling. (The Foundation, headed by environmental activist Vandana Shiva, had cited the company's recycling operations as an example of the handling of hazardous waste being dumped in the country under the guise of importing waste for recycling.)

RAVI AGARWAL
A backyard lead recycling smelter near Delhi.

As instructed by the Supreme Court, the Ministry of Environment and Forests formed a committee headed by M.G.K. Menon in October 1997. The seven-member panel was asked not only to look at the issues raised in the petition against Bharat Zinc, but also to focus on the larger issues posed by waste recycling.

Stirling Smith, a trade union educator from the United Kingdom and an expert on issues relating to the health and safety of workers, told Frontline that the international trade in hazardous waste is a "cloak-and-dagger affair" (see interview). According to him, it is difficult to identify exporters of toxic waste since they operate through a chain of intermediaries.

Labelling the containers falsely is one way of beating the ban. Moreover, Indian Customs laws do not allow for landed consignments to be reshipped to the country of their origin. The authorities can only confiscate or destroy consignments. More than 300 containers of hazardous waste lie at the Mumbai port and the Jawaharlal Nehru Port (near Mumbai) and more than 100 at the inland Tughlakabad container terminal in Delhi. Stirling Smith says that he "shudders to think" of the situation at the numerous minor ports that are administered by State Governments. Ravi Agarwal says that the Customs authorities are equipped only to handle issues relating to revenue and not to test for the hazardous content of cargo. According to Stirling Smith, port and dock workers, "being at the front line", have a crucial role to play in the campaign to get the Government to ratify the Basel Convention. In fact, the campaign against the export of waste from Australia to India was successful largely because Australian port workers alerted Greenpeace International.

BUSINESS interests, particularly those represented by the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Indian Non-Ferrous Metal Manufacturers' Association, have taken the stand that India should not ratify the Convention because it would affect around 5,000 scrap recycling plants, which employ more than 500,000 persons. However, environmental activists claim that much of the waste is simply dumped and is not recycled. They point to Greenpeace's campaign against Bharat Zinc. The Ministry of Environment and Forests had cited it as an efficient recycling unit, but an analysis of the unit's functioning by Greenpeace in 1995 revealed that the residual waste contained hazardous substances far above the prescribed levels.

Activists such as Ravi Agarwal are in favour of "harmonising" Customs laws, maritime and port regulations and environmental legislation. Moreover, Cus-toms and pollution control boards need to work together and be better equipped to control the trade, they say. The ratification of the Basel Convention by India would enable the establishment of these monitoring and enforcement structures and help prevent hazardous and toxic waste from reaching Indian shores.

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