ENVIRONMENTALISTS are hopeful that the incoming Marcos administration would institute essential policy measures to prevent garbage dumping incidents and protect the nation’s interest from global waste trade. Remember the re-exportation of the infamous Canadian garbage to its source three years ago?
President-elect Marcos should target the ratification of the Basel Convention Ban Amendment among his top priorities in the first 100 days of his administration to uphold environmental health and justice, along with a national ban on waste importation.
The Ban Amendment, adopted by the parties to the Basel Convention in 1995, prohibits the export of hazardous wastes for recycling or disposal from member states of the European Union, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and Liechtenstein to all other countries. The Ban Amendment finally entered into force in December 2019.
The ratification of the Basel Convention Ban Amendment will be a fitting honor for the late Ilongga senator Miriam Defensor Santiago who ran for President in the 2016 elections with Marcos as his running mate. In one resolution authored by Santiago, she called for “an inquiry, in aid of legislation, on ways to decisively prevent illegal waste dumping from abroad, including the ratification of the ‘Basel Convention Ban Amendment’ and other legal measures to protect the country from becoming a global dump for hazardous waste.”
In another resolution, the late senator said “there is a need to immediately ratify the Basel Ban Amendment to prohibit the export of toxic waste from developed countries to developing countries.”
President-elect Marcos is familiar with the issue of hazardous waste trade having filed a resolution at the 16th Congress when he was still senator “to investigate, in aid of legislation, the dumping of Canadian trash into the country, and institute measures to protect public health and environment against toxic and hazardous materials, and ensure environmentally sound waste management.”
Then Senator Marcos said “it is crucial to scrutinize the policy of the government in allowing the foreign-sourced trash into local landfills in order to assess and enhance viable mechanisms to protect our people from the health perils brought about by the gargantuan rubbish literally thrown into our own backyard, at the expense of our people.”
Let us make it clear: the Philippines is not the dumpsite of the world.
