The Cartagena Declaration on the Prevention, Minimization and Recovery of Hazardous Wastes and Other Wastes , adopted on the occasion of the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties, sets forth a strong commitment by the Parties to the Basel Convention to promote the prevention and minimization of the generation of hazardous and other wastes.
At its tenth meeting in 2011, the Conference of the Parties recognized that despite efforts taken and progress achieved in the first twenty years of the Basel Convention, the volume of hazardous and other wastes continued to increase on a global level, and transboundary movements of hazardous and other wastes had not diminished. To address the resulting threats to human health and the environment, the Conference of the Parties adopted the Cartagena Declaration on the Prevention, Minimization and Recovery of Hazardous Waste and Other Wastes. Parties thereby committed to actively promote and implement more efficient waste prevention and minimization strategies, to take measures to decouple economic growth and environmental impacts, and to encourage more systematic and comprehensive global and regional efforts for improved access to cleaner production methods, including through capacity building and technology transfer.
Road map for action
At its subsequent meeting, the Conference of the Parties requested the Open-ended Working Group to review the progress of Parties in implementing the Cartagena Declaration and to prepare a road map for action. The road map for action, as adopted by the twelfth meeting of the Conference of the Parties in 2015 (decision BC-12/2 ), mandated the expert working group on environmentally sound management to develop guidance to assist Parties in developing efficient waste prevention and minimization strategies, taking into account the prevention manual developed by the same group.
A draft outline of the guidance document was submitted to the tenth meeting of the Open-ended Working Group for its consideration. The latter welcomed the work undertaken and set out a process for the further development and revision of the guidance document (decision OEWG-10/3 ). At its sixth meeting, the expert working group further developed the draft guidance document for submission to the thirteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties for its consideration.
Call for information
The Road map for action on the implementation of the Cartagena Declaration invites Parties to submit to the Basel Convention Secretariat information on experiences in implementing the Cartagena Declaration, such as information on strategies and programmes on waste prevention, minimization and recovery, on measuring their progress, and on technology transfer and capacity building (decision BC-12/2) .
Comments received
The following comments have been received in response to the call for information in the Road map for action on the implementation of the Cartagena Declaration.
Submitter
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Date |
Title
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Document |
| European Union and its Member States |
2 December 2015 |
Decision BC-12/2, Road map for action on the implementation of the Cartagena Declaration |
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