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                    GREENPEACE PRESS RELEASE
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>> YOUSSOU N'DOUR AND ENVIRONMENTALISTS JOIN IN CONDEMNING
EFFORTS TO OVERTURN WASTE DUMPING BAN
 
DAKAR, Senegal 17 March 1995 (GP) Popular singer Youssou N'Dour
from Senegal joined Greenpeace, Senegalese and South African
environmentalists today to denounce efforts undertaken by certain
industrial organisations and governments to undermine the
international ban on the dumping of hazardous wastes in
developing countries.
 
The hazardous waste dumping ban agreed in March last year was
passed by a consensus decision of the Basel Convention Parties.
The decision prohibited all exports of hazardous wastes from the
industrialised countries of the Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) to non-OECD countries for
final disposal (immediately) and for recycling (from 1998).  
The Ban decision was the culmination of 8 years of effort by
African nations, and the G-77 group of developing countries. 
Senegal played a leadership role in all of the Basel Convention
negotiations and particularly at the March 1994 conference in
support of the ban.  
 
This week in Dakar, Senegal sponsored an international workshop,
to discuss implementation of the ban.  However, leaked documents
obtained by Greenpeace revealed that the International Chamber of
Commerce representing waste exporting industries and certain
governments like the USA, the EU Commission and Australia
intended to use the workshop to sabotage the Basel Ban rather
than implement it.  
 
However, the effort to discredit the ban failed, despite the fact
that 80% of workshop speakers represented industries associated
with hazardous waste export and very few speakers at the meeting
represented governments of non-OECD countries.
 
At the close of the workshop, Denmark proposed that an
extraordinary meeting of the Basel Technical Working Group be
held in Copenhagen to resolve the questions over waste
definitions in order to implement the ban decision.
 
"For those seeking to sabotage the ban, the meeting was an utter
failure," said Dr. Kevin Stairs, toxics policy advisor for
Greenpeace.  "For Senegal, the rest of Africa, and the entire
world, the meeting was successful in that it began to grapple
with the details of implementing this historic decision."
 
"Hazardous waste is not a commodity like bananas or rice," said
Mr. Abou Thiam of ENDA (Environment Development Action in the
Third World), "It is a disease which must be prevented at source
rather than spread around the globe."
 
"In South Africa, hazardous waste importation for recycling has
killed at least 3 persons outright and contaminated our country
irreparably," said Mr. Tebogo Phadu of EJNF, (Environmental
Justice Networking Forum) of South Africa.  "This type of
business is not development, it is a crime against humanity and
the environment."
 
Singer Youssou N'Dour of Dakar, who four years earlier had
written the song "Toxique" about toxic waste dumping on third
world countries, stated, "When I wrote my song years ago, the
fashion was dumping toxic wastes on the beaches and jungles of
Africa, now the fashion is to call the dumping 'recycling'.  But
once poisoned you cannot recycle human life, nor our precious
nature.  Therefore we must not relent to the powers that would
traffic in toxic wastes."
 
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