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A
DIPLOMATIC arrangement prohibiting Japan from sending
toxic waste to the Philippines will still be unable to
prevent the entry of hazardous materials in the country
owing to its weak laws, an environmental group warned.
In a
statement, Greenpeace Southeast Asia said that the
arrangement, as subsumed under the Japan-Philippines
Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA), has not allayed
fears of toxic-waste dumping in the Philippines.
“Current
hazardous waste laws in the Philippines are among the
weakest in Southeast Asia and allow the entry of toxic
waste under the guise of recycling,” Beau Baconguis,
Greenpeace Southeast Asia Toxics campaigner, said in a
statement.
Although
the Japanese government has confirmed that it will not
export toxic waste to the Philippines, Baconguis said
that the trade accord “still includes provisions which
incentivize trading of hazardous waste, and suggests
that the diplomatic notes now being packaged as some
kind of side agreement to the treaty are not as
clear-cut as both parties would like to make it appear.”
“In
essence, what the diplomatic notes say is that Japan
will not be sending its hazardous waste to the
Philippines
unless the latter party agrees to it,” Baconguis said in
a statement. “Given what we know about the DENR’s
[Department of Environment and Natural Resources]…we are
constrained to take this latest pronouncement with a
grain of salt.”
While
both Manila and Tokyo have signed the Basel Convention,
neither has ratified the Basel Ban Amendment, allowing
the entry of hazardous waste in the country under the
excuse of recycling, the statement said.
“Japan
can ship out toxic waste legally since it is also not
party to the Ban Amendment,” Baconguis said.
“With
the current text of the JPEPA, the Philippines is wide
open to a shameless list of toxic waste that includes
used diapers and radioactive nuclear waste. If indeed
both countries are strongly committed to addressing
environmental concerns, they would opt for removing such
toxic provisions in the treaty—rather than merely
issuing diplomatic letters external to the original
agreement, and whose weight, in the face of the
bilateral treaty itself, is highly questionable,” the
toxic campaigner said. |
