Reassessing the Waste Trade Crisis: What Do We Really Know?

Abstract

Most analyses of the international trade in hazardous waste have begun with the assumption that uncontrolled waste movements have created an environmental crisis of monumental proportions, especially in the world's poorest and weakest countries. This article questions that assumption by taking a close look at the best available data on legal and illegal transfers of waste to developing and middle-income countries. The data reveal little indication of a vast, uncontrolled waste trade from North to South. While further empirical investigations are needed, the incongruity between assumption and fact must be reconciled. This article begins to resolve that inconsistency by offering some explanations for the lack of evidence that developing countries have been unwitting recipients of the toxic detritus of the industrialized world.