Five-day UN meet on waste management held in Indonesia

A five-day UN meeting on waste management began on Monday in Indonesia, in which more than 1000 delegates from 170 countries participate at the meeting on the Basel Convention in Bali.

The fate of more than three billion mobile phones in use today and the disposal of massive numbers of unwanted mobile phones will be discussed with a key focus on them by the participants.

Delegates will discuss new guidelines for disposing of the phones, which have grown from technological obscurity into a household essential and a major waste challenge-in a matter of years.

The conference would consider adopting new sets of guidelines for the environmentally sound management of used and end-of –life mobile phones..

The use of mobile phones has grown exponentially from the first few users in the 1970’s to more than three billion in April,2008.These phones will be discarded soon in whole or in parts.

While highlighting the phone issue, organizers said the effect of hazardous waste on human health and livelihoods would be a focus of the ninth ‘council of parties’ meeting of the 1992 treaty.

Opening the conference, Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar said that Indonesia’s long coastline has been particularly vulnerable to the illegal dumping of toxic waste. Due to its archipelagic nature, with the second largest coastline in the world, Indonesia has been vulnerable to illegal traffic of trans-boundary hazardous waste.He also added that the rich nations  needed to do more to stop their toxic waste being dumped in poor countries.

This dumping hazardous waste had killed populations of wildlife like lions and elephants and even children in Africa and the developed countries that dump their waste tend to ignore the problem.

The Basel Convention is an international treaty which regulates the international trade in  hazardous waste and aims to minimize its generation and movement across borders.

Participants are expected to adopt a Bali Declaration aimed at highlighting the  importance of health and waste management  for global development strategies such as reducing poverty.

Convention Executive Secretary Katherine Kummer Fiery said that countries on the receiving end of the trafficking of waste should be able to globally challenge dumping nations.

She further said, ‘There needs to be a joint commitment to help the suffering country using the Basel Convention.A mediating body could be formed and problems could be brought to an International court.’