Out of the Backyard: The Problems of Hazardous Waste Management at a Global Level

Abstract

This article explores recent developments in the regulation of the international hazardous waste trade. It begins with the move in recent years toward banning the North-South waste trade and shows how this ban reflects a particular specification of the waste trade, as a transboundary environmental issue whereby domestic waste management problems are seen as issues of sovereign national responsibility. It examines another way of formulating the waste trade: as a symptom of more fundamental problems afflicting waste management sectors in most industrialized countries. Without taking this perspective into account, the ban on the waste trade is likely to fail. The final section is more optimistic, examining how certain countries—Britain, France, Germany, and Australia—are formulating policy change in ways likely to have an impact on the waste trade, drawing conclusions about how the role of international authorities might be revised in the light of these developments.