Dr. Olurominiyi Ibitayo is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy, School of Public Affairs, Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas. Ibitayo’s research interests and experience include environmental risk assessment, risk communication and emergency preparedness, ethnic minority environmental research and population-environment interrelationship.
- Mozambique: Assembly Ratifies Environmental Protocols
- Where Gadgets Go to Die: Facility Strips, Rips and Recycles
- Nigeria: Cleaning Alaba Market of Toxic Wastes
- Nigeria: Senate Seeks Regulation of Hazardous E-Products
- One man’s trash is another man’s problem
- Member states urged to improve reporting of waste exports
- The World’s Cleanest Countries
Transboundary dumping of hazardous waste refers to the export, often surreptitiously, of hazardous waste by developed and industrialized countries to developing nations, usually sub-Sahara African countries. Hazardous waste, though undesirable, is the inevitable by-product of industrial development and several manufacturing processes. If improperly managed, these wastes may result in substantial adverse human health and environmental effects. Proper management of hazardous waste however requires the establishment of treatment and disposal facilities such as waste incinerators and landfills. While these facilities may be desirable and often required by law, public opposition, more than physical, technological, environmental and economic factors tends to stifle the siting of new facilities and the expansion of existing ones. This phenomenon which is highly prevalent especially in industrialized countries is not unexpected because hazardous waste incinerators and landfills are good examples of LULUs – locally-unwanted-land-uses, which nobody wants in his or her backyard, an example of the NIMBY syndrome (not-in-my-back-yard). The success rate of siting these facilities especially in the U.S. is so dismal that it seems impossible to site them “in anybody’s backyard”.
However, as hazardous wastes are being generated in increasingly large quantities, and as environmental laws become more stringent in industrialized countries, waste-generating industries tend to frantically search for a “path of least resistance” for the disposal of these wastes. This search has led industries and the governments of developed and industrialized nations to focus on exporting these wastes to developing countries especially sub-Sahara African countries. These countries serve as prime targets for at least four reasons. First, most of these countries have relatively high levels of poverty, low Gross National Product (GNP) and high foreign debt, hence importing hazardous waste as a source of foreign exchange can be highly tempting. For example, Guinea Bissau, one of the poorest 20 countries in the world was to be paid $600 million for storing and disposing of imported hazardous waste. At the time of the offer, the amount was twice the country’s foreign debt, and about four times its Gross National Product.
Second, lack of stringency of environmental regulations such as requirement for high performance and health-based standards for the design, siting, and closure of toxic waste disposal facilities, and the low level of implementation of existing policies are the norms in most of these countries. Toxic waste treatment and disposal facilities can therefore be built cheaply and without considerations for adverse human health and environmental effects. In Dakar, Senegal, the hazardous waste landfill is built very close to the water table thereby posing a threat to the drinking water supply of the estimated 2.5 million residents of Dakar, the capital city.
Third, high level of corruption is prevalent in sub-Sahara African countries hence government officials both elected and appointed, can easily be bribed to surreptitiously import toxic waste into their countries. The unregulated dumping of toxic waste on Kassa Island in Guinea involved the collaboration of a Guinean company and the complicity of some officials of the country’s Ministry of Trade. Fourth, most sub-Saharan African countries lack the technical expertise necessary for the proper identification of both the elements of the imported hazardous waste and its human health and environmental impacts. The exporting companies are aware of this lack of technical expertise on the part of these destination countries; hence they often disguise the hazardous wastes as useful commodities that are relatively harmless. Within this context, the wastes are often shipped or labeled as recyclables, liquid fertilizers, road construction or brick-making materials.
The dumping of hazardous waste in these and other developing countries is usually shrouded in secrecy on the part of both the exporters and the destination countries. The exporters’ clandestine activities often include falsification of custom papers and invoices. Even when the destination country agrees to the dumping, the transaction is usually kept secret and often denied if the transaction becomes public knowledge. The President of the Republic of Benin denied the report of an agreement, earlier confirmed, to dispose of substantial quantities of imported hazardous waste near the Nigeria-Republic of Benin border. The vehement denial which came after public disclosure of the proposed transactions may have been due at least in part to the threats made by the Nigerian government to forcibly prevent the disposal of the hazardous waste at the border. Notwithstanding the short-term financial benefit of importing hazardous waste, most of these destination countries do not want to be characterized, at least openly, as the garbage can or dumping ground for the waste — any type of waste — generated by the industrialized and affluent countries.
While some transactions generated little or no controversies, two highly-publicized incidents of dumping of toxic waste which backfired were reported in June 1988. More than 15,000 tons of incinerator ash from the city of Philadelphia, U.S. was dumped on Kassa Island in Guinea by Bulkhandling, a Norwegian company. The dumping was reportedly carried out with the collaboration of a Guinean company, the complicity of four officials of Guinea’s Ministry of Trade, and the reported involvement of the Norwegian Consulate Office in Conakry, Guinea. The four Ministry of Trade officials each received a four-year jail term while the Guinean government ordered that the ash be removed. Also, more than 8,000 drums of hazardous waste including the highly toxic PCBs were stored on the property of a Nigerian citizen, Nana, in Koko (a small delta port) by an Italian businessman, Gianfranco. Nana was reportedly paid $100 per month for the “service”. More than 50 people that were involved in the illegal dumping were jailed. However, it was not until the Nigerian government seized an Italian ship and several Italian citizens that the Italian government agreed to remove the hazardous waste.
Some regional and global initiatives have been established to control or at least reduce international shipment of hazardous waste, and its effects. These include the 1984 and 1985 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Initiatives Concerning Transfrontier Movements of Hazardous Waste (OECD Initiatives), United Nations Basel Convention on Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Waste and Their Disposal (Basel Convention), European Union/African, Caribbean, and Pacific initiative (EU/ACP initiative), and the 1988 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) resolution (ECOWAS resolution).