AFTER bringing the case of the Canadian waste dumping in the Philippines before the Secretariat of the Basel Convention, environmental group BAN Toxics (BT) and Seattle-based Basel Action Network (BAN) are now urging the government to do its part.
They want the Philippine government to alert the Implementation and Compliance Committee (ICC) at the Basel Convention should Canada continue to ignore the clamor for that country to take back household waste that it illegally shipped into the country last year.
The groups issued the call after the announcement from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) that it will lodge a diplomatic protest against Canada over its negligence to the treaty.
The Terms of Reference of the Mechanism for Promoting Implementation and Compliance provides that a “party that has concerns or is affected by a failure to comply with and/or implement the convention’s obligations” may submit these concerns to the ICC.
BAN Toxic Executive Director Richard Gutierrez said the Philippine government needs to do more than just issue a diplomatic protest in this case.
“It is in the government’s best interest and the interest of the global community to ensure that this dumping will not happen again and that no other countries should suffer the indignity that we are experiencing because of Canada’s non-compliance. The ICC can help ensure this,” he said.
The DFA said it is still waiting for some documents from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Bureau of Customs to back its note verbale to the Canadian Embassy.
BAN and BT had already taken the case of Canadian waste dumping in the Philippines before the secretariat of the Basel Convention, asserting that it is a Basel Convention Annex II waste, export of which should be strictly controlled by Canada in accordance with the rules of the Basel Convention.
The groups said Canada maintained that its domestic laws do not control household waste, indicating that Canada has failed to properly transpose its international treaty obligations into domestic law.
The Basel Convention has adopted the ICC for handling matters of noncompliance. Cases can only be brought to the ICC either by the country out of compliance (Canada), an impacted country, or in this case the Philippines, or by the Secretariat.
The groups believe that the Philippines’s making a submission with the ICC sends a strong signal that international law functions well and provides hope for countries similarly victimized.
“The Basel Convention’s ICC will take this matter and study it independently with a view of assisting all countries to come into compliance with the convention,” BAN Executive Director Jim Puckett said.
“A diplomatic protest mechanism is here today, gone tomorrow. The committee will provide for real solutions so this never happens again,” he added.
Some of the contents of 26 of the 103 container vans have been disposed of in a landfill in Tarlac, which triggered howls of protest from various stakeholders.