Basel Convention Plastic Waste Amendment and Continued Aftermath : Remnant Challenge & Future Road for a Cleaner Environment

As an internationally-traded commodity, plastic waste has been part of the ongoing recycling market, consequently leaving its unwanted disproportionate environmental and health burden on the world's most vulnerable populations. Africa and East Asian countries, where most of the plastic waste has been exported or illegally trafficked since the late 1980s, are countries that are underdeveloped where few waste management infrastructures exist. In order to halt the concentrated plastic waste pollution on these poor parts of the world, the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Dispo sal, known as the Basel Convention (hereinafter “the Convention”), was established. The Basel Convention is an international treaty designed to control the movement of hazardous waste between nations, and particularly from developed to developing nations. Outrageous practices increased with the number of reported incidents, with The Khian Sea incident perhaps drawing the greatest attention worldwide. The Basel Convention was a response a product of international concern about these Western nations’ excessive dumping of hazardous waste in impoverished, developing nations during the 1970s and 1980s. As the Basel Convention is regarded as extremely business unfriendly, the Convention has been a great concern of the global recycling industry. Despite, in the absence of any other dedicated, enforceable international legal regime as to plastic waste recycling, the Convention remains the basis of plastic waste recycling multilateral environmental agreement since 1992. In 2019, however, the Convention was amended to narrow down the plastic wastes within the category of wastes controlled as “hazardous waste,” or “waste requiring special consideration.” However, despite, because of many remaind challenges, mainly due to the continual act of illegal trafficking, an illegal export of plastic waste, which is an act of deliberate dump of hazardous wastes, which is regarded as one of the worst environmental issues, by a number of countries, severe damage to human health and pollution to both land and the marine environment is getting serious. This article, thus, seeks to address the challenging issue relevant to the Basel Convention and its resolution. The article will first talk about analyzing certain key terms and provisions of the Convention, which went under amendment in 2019. The article postulates that reliance on the amended Convention as it is itself is not enough and there needs to be further stricter realistic regulations for the Convention to be effectively applied, which should be concentrated on the protection of the poorest countries that have little regulations within the counry as to plastic waste. Then, the article will divulge the serious issue of illegal traffic in plastic waste and look into how to prevent illegal traffic realistically and effectively in order to combat plastic crisis based on the Convention. The article will be concluded by reflecting on the very initiative purpose of the Basel Convention, which could make a huge difference on marine environment for it will be a potential cataylist to ameliorate the lives of the people, especially the people in one of the poorest and vulnerable countries in the world.