Can Someone Explain Basel Convention? Part 2

So I just returned from the E-Scrap Conference in Orlando, Florida, held at the Orlando Hilton from September 30 to October 2.  The final session of the conference, moderated by Colin Staub, had 4 panelists.

Jim Puckett, Basel Action Network

Patricia Whiting, Whiting and Daswani Consulting

Craig Boswell, HOBI International (Texas)

Emmanuel Nyaletey, BridgeSolarPower.com 

First, what everyone basically agrees on.  "The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (hereinafter referred to as “the Basel Convention”) was adopted in 1989, in response to a public outcry following the discovery, in the 1980s, in Africa and other parts of the developing world of deposits of toxic wastes imported from abroad." (https://www.basel.int/TheConvention/Overview/History/Overview)

In general, the idea behind the Basel Convention was that industrialized nations shouldn't dump industrial hazardous waste on non-industrialized nations.  We can all agree that makes sense - industry makes money which should be spent on cleaning up the waste those industries make.  

We all agree on the historical context of the Basel Convention.

By the time the Basel Convention negotiations started in Cairo in 1987*, the concept of "industrialized" nations was already changing.  People generally agreed that newly industrializing nations, like China, should be given a period of forgiveness to grow their economies to the point they could afford their own proper waste treatment.  China's industrialization began under Mao's successor, Deng Xiaoping, who allowed private investment and private corporate development in Guangdong Province. The surge in industrialization was largely led by Hong Kong and Taiwanese engineers and investors, including Han Hoi Precision Industry Group of Taipei (known by its tradename "Foxconn").

[*Note: in 1983 I spent my Senior Year first semester in Geneva, studying why the US refused to sign onto the International Code of Marketing of Breast Milk Substitutes. I had quite long hair and had led the petition to boycott the sale of Nestle candy products at Carleton College two years earlier, leading me to be elected at the liberal arts college's Student Body president - though I ran more on campus recycling and tuition-debt protests that year. My faculty advisor, Professor Roy Grow, had lived in China for more than a decade, was fluent in Mandarin, and I earned my degree in International Relations in 1984]

Most of us would also agree that the concepts of globalization and industrialization and "First World", "Second World" (industrialized communist countries), and "Third World" had already begun to fracture and intersperse by that time (see Gapminder).  Terms like "Third World" continue to be used to describe extremely complex economies, but with diminishing sense.  Take, for example, Brazil, whose metropolitan Sao Paulo earned an average of $23,099 ten years ago (2015), while the country as a whole still only produces $9,077 per capita today (2023).  If you spend time in Sao Paulo* Brazil, it's obviously not an "Informal Economy". If Sao Paulo seceded from Brazil, like Singapore did from Malaysia in 1965, it could easily be identified as a "First World" industrialized country, as Singapore - the second highest per capita GDP - is today.

[*Note: Morgan Ingenthron - our son - spent a semester in Sao Paulo in 2018 for his Economics BA and Portuguese language minor in 2018]

Where Jim Puckett and I agree on fact but not on emphasis is that the Basel Convention tried to make the waste trade applicable by drawing a bright line on national borders... and used membership in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as a make-or-break indicator of "First World" industrialized nations, for whom the Basel Convention would apply.

The blog has covered the OECD, and its origins as the Organization for European Economic Co-operation... the OEEC, which distributed funds from the Marshall Plan to make post-war Europe more free and fair and rebuild it into a free market and democratic economic partnership. That made non-democracies (Cold War Eastern Europe) ineligible for OEEC Marshall Plan funding for the most part.  

The OECD in 1961 expanded to cover world economic cooperation and still contains many of the "democracy" criteria.  In the 1970s that worked - most globalized industries were in the OECD (which included Japan in the otherwise historically "white" OECD population... South Korea, home of Samsung and Hyundai, was not included in the OECD until 1996, after the Basel Convention was in place). Like Sao Paulo, South Korea could never have been admitted into the OECD at all if North Korea was included. More on that later. Taiwan and Hong Kong, despite having industrial prowess dwarfing any 1980s OECD nation, can't be OECD because of the "One China" policy.

During the OEEC and early OECD, being a non-democracy was a disadvantage - they couldn't access aid funding. But in today's market, Basel Convention Amendment makes non-democracy a huge advantage. It's not aid, but trade, and the non-OECD Industrialized Countries have a huge and growing share of it, and use the Basel Convention to their advantage.

Singapore, incidentally, most recently reported $82,807.63 per capita (2022). That is the #2 richest country, per capita, in the world (after Luxembourg.  But Singapore has made NO EFFORT to join the OECD like Japan and South Korea did. They are winning by staying in the "non-OECD", trading with 75% of the world's consumers. If anyone needed an example about how "Third World" has changed since the Basel Convention was ratified, visit Singapore. 

What I think everyone should agree to is that "OECD" membership today is certainly not an indicator of "industrialization" and barely serves as an indicator of "first world" status.  Most Political Science professors stopped using the terms "First World" and "Third World" decades ago. 

The "world's rich countries" had no meaning when the Amazon River Basin industrialization (not) in Brazil was "averaged" with Sao Paulo.  The meaninglessness, arbitrary state of Basel Convention's segregation is where our Panel Members will certainly disagree. But it's true - The Convention is now just the art of restraint of trade. It's a game that BRIC (Brazil Russia India China) is winning and Africa, USA, EU, Japan and Korea are losing.

As noted in Part 1, 75% of the world's consumer population now lives in the non-OECD countries. Singapore doesn't want to belong to any club that would have them for a member. Smart.

The share of global GDP produced by OECD countries has seen a noticeable decline over the past few decades as non-OECD economies, particularly those in Asia, have grown rapidly.  But the restrictions on trade are growing, inversely proportional to the divisions that Basel Convention advocates cited in the 1980s.  The more equal globalization becomes, the more Basel wants to segregate the businesses trading in it.

When the OECD was founded in 1961, its member countries represented a significant majority of the world's GDP. However, by 2021, OECD countries accounted for about 46% of global GDP, a decrease from earlier decades. In 2017, OECD countries held 48%, indicating a relatively stable but slowly decreasing share over recent years.

This shift in GDP share is largely driven by the rapid economic growth of non-OECD countries, particularly China and India. For instance, China alone accounted for 19% of global GDP in 2021, making it the largest economy in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. In contrast, the United States contributed about 15.5%, which remains significant but shows the rise of other economic powers​.

This chart was produced by OpenAI ChatGPT, so I have not fact checked it yet, but fed it the following data sources (see links).  And it looks pretty similar to the GAPMINDER statistical data for other key indicators such as per capita income for the period.

OECD

World Bank Data

World Bank Blogs

This trend reflects the increasing economic power of emerging and middle-income economies, which have expanded their global influence, while OECD countries have seen slower growth relative to these rising economies.

What this means is that even more so than Singapore, Hong Kong, Sao Paulo differ from their regional geographic land mass, including AFRICA in the same set of rules as CHINA is absolutely meaningless.

In part 3, the blog will look at the questions raised by Emmanuel Nyaletey at the E-Scrap panel, both in the session and in my interview with him before and afterwards.

He makes the blunt case - if China's economy succeeded through companies like Han Hoi Precision Industries which used aftermarket parts to build affordable "white box" computers and display devices, when those were not considered "Annex A" illegal hazardous waste, and the Amended Basel Convention now takes China's path to Industrialization away from Africa, who does that benefit?

1. NOT THE USA, Europe, Japan, or South Korea.  Our used commodities and products compete head to head - and Emmanual says very favorably - with cheap Chinese "new" products.

2. NOT AFRICA or the GLOBAL SOUTH. Emmanuel's best chance at bringing Africa further is to trade and import from whomever he can get the best deals on affordable working and repairable solar panels and electronics.

3. NOT THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY, CARBON, OR FUTURE GENERATIONS.  The Basel Convention bureaucracy of "prior consent" now applies to recycled content (plastic, shredded metals) and not to raw ores mined by African children in conditions far more horrible than any of Jim Puckett's e-waste photos.

4. Who benefits? See the chart again... the non-OECD industrialized nations.

China and other non-OECD industrialized nations. They can trade with 75% of the world and can object if anyone in that world sends their recycled scrap to OECD competitors or tries to buy used goods from the rich countries instead of relying on China's dirty new manufacturing.

And watch again Emmanuel's comments (3-minute "Clean Hands Teaser" 2015) on the arrest of Joseph "Hurricane" Benson under Project Eden - Jim Puckett's mastermind strategy to attack the diaspora that straddles these nations, calling them "informal" and "primitive" in his cringeworthy kickoff essay for 2010's Project Eden - A Place Called Away.