Opening statement by the Secretariat of the Basel Convention

for the side event entitled “Electric and electronic wastes and the Basel Convention Regional Centres”

Delivered by Mr. Nelson Sabogal

Secretariat of the Basel Convention

Distinguish participants,

The Secretariat of the Basel Convention is very happy to welcome you to this side event on electric and electronic wastes (e-waste).

Let me thank the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Health Organization and in particular the SAICM secretariat for providing us this opportunity to discuss on e-waste issues during the Second session of the International Conference on Chemicals Management.

The Basel Convention started to address the issue of electronic waste in 2002 at its sixth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention (December 2002) by a High- level roundtable on environmentally sound management of e-waste and the establishment of a sustainable partnership for the ESM of end-of-life mobile phones.

COP 7 in October 2004 included electronic wastes as priority waste stream in the Strategic Plan.

At the eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention in December 2006 the theme of the COP was “creating innovative solutions through the Basel Convention for the environmentally sound management of electronic wastes”, this theme was addressed through the “World Forum on E-waste” and the Nairobi Declaration on the Environmentally Sound Management of Electrical and Electronic Waste was adopted at this COP 8.

The Nairobi Declaration underlines the fact that the Basel Convention provides an effective framework for developing strategic partnerships to continue discussing and exchanging views and experiences with a view to continuing to improve the environmentally sound management of e-waste worldwide.

COP 8 also adopted the decision VIII/2 on creating innovative solutions through the Basel Convention for the environmentally sound management of electrical and electronic wastesthat mandated more structured and enhanced efforts towards achieving solutions for e-waste problems globally.

More recently, in June 2008 COP 9 adopted the workplan of the BaselConvention for the environmentally sound management of e-waste and a new Partnership for Action on Computing Equipment (PACE) was also agreed.SBC is preparing the Technical Guidelines on e-waste.

The Basel Convention has 14 Regional Centres that strengthens ability for developing countries in the regions to implement the Convention. The Basel Convention regional and coordinating centres located in Argentina, China, Egypt and Indonesia have carried out projects on the environmentally sound management of e-waste. Several Parties to the Basel Convention also have carried out projects on the environmentally sound management of e-waste.

The SBC and BCRCs will be implementing more projects on the environmentally sound management of e-waste, including the e-waste Africa project supported by the EC (AIDCO) being implemented by the BCRCs located in Nigeria, Senegal and Egypt.

One of the most successful achievements of the Basel Convention is the Mobile Phone Partnership Initiative (MPPI) and its guidance documents prepared by the Mobile Phone Working Group.

The Basel Convention, is the most relevant existing global instrument to address international efforts to deal with the e-waste challenge especially with regard to waste electrical and electronic equipment going for recycling, recovery and disposal. Through the available financial mechanism existing under SAICM Quick Start Programme (QSP), Parties to the Convention could benefit from more concerted efforts in solving the ever-growing influx of nationally generated and imported e-waste.

Distinguished delegates, Directors of the Centres, participants and colleagues please allow me to thank you for your participation.

Information:

Proposed actions on emerging policy issues (Document: SAICM/ICCM.2/10/Add.1*);

Information Note by the Secretariat of the Basel Convention (Document: SAICM/ICCM.2/INF/44);

Background information in relation to the emerging policy issue of electronic waste prepared by Prof. Oladele Osibanjo Convention (Document: SAICM/ICCM.2/INF/36);

Electronic waste is of concern largely due to the toxicity and carcinogenicity of some of its substances, if processed improperly. Toxic substances in electronic waste may include lead, mercury, and cadmium. Carcinogenic substances in electronic waste may include polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

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