Chemicals and waste conventions

The first principle

A hazardous substance does not respect borders: it can be shipped to a poorer country as waste, sold abroad after being banned at home, or carried by wind and water to places that never used it. A single country cannot protect itself against any of these, so the chemicals treaties work on two ideas: a country must know and agree before a dangerous chemical or waste enters it, and the worst substances, those that persist and build up in living things, must be removed from use altogether.

The core

Basel Convention: waste crossing borders

• What it is. The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal was adopted in 1989 and came into force in 1992, after scandals in the 1980s in which ships dumped industrial waste in Africa and the Caribbean. India ratified it in 1992.
• How it works. An exporter may ship hazardous or other listed waste only with the prior informed consent of the importing and transit countries, trade with non Parties is barred unless a separate agreement meets Basel standards, and each Party must reduce waste generation and manage waste in an environmentally sound way close to where it is produced. Illegal traffic is treated as a criminal offence.
• The Ban Amendment (1995, in force 2019). It forbids the export of hazardous waste from members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the European Union and Liechtenstein to all other countries, for any purpose including recycling, but it binds only the Parties that ratify it.
• New waste streams. Amendments adopted in 2019 brought most mixed and contaminated plastic waste under prior informed consent from 1 January 2021, and amendments adopted in 2022 did the same for all electrical and electronic waste, hazardous or not, from 1 January 2025.

Rotterdam Convention: trade in hazardous chemicals

• What it is. The Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade was adopted in 1998 and came into force in 2004, and India acceded in 2005.
• How it works. For chemicals listed in Annex III, an exporting country must have the importing country's recorded decision before it ships, and Parties must share information on chemicals they ban or restrict. It is a consent procedure, not a ban: a country may still import a listed chemical if it chooses to.
• The listing fight. A chemical is listed only by consensus, so one Party can block it. Chrysotile asbestos and some paraquat formulations have been recommended by the expert committee for years and blocked each time, and India, which uses chrysotile in asbestos cement sheets, has been among the countries opposing the asbestos listing.

Stockholm Convention: persistent organic pollutants

• What they are. Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are carbon based chemicals with four traits: they resist breakdown, dissolve in fat and so build up in body tissue, travel far through air and water, and are toxic to nerves, hormones and reproduction.
• What it does. The Stockholm Convention, adopted in 2001 and in force since 2004, began with the "dirty dozen", including DDT, aldrin, dieldrin, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins and furans. Annex A chemicals are to be eliminated, Annex B chemicals restricted to listed uses, and Annex C chemicals, produced unintentionally as when waste is burnt, are to be reduced. India ratified it in 2006.
• DDT is the famous exception. DDT sits in Annex B with an acceptable purpose for disease vector control, which lets India keep using it against malaria carrying mosquitoes under World Health Organization guidance.
• How POPs build up. Because they are stored in fat and passed on when one organism eats another, their concentration rises at each step of a food chain, a process called biomagnification, so top predators carry far more than their environment.

Minamata Convention: one metal

• What it is. The Minamata Convention on Mercury, adopted in 2013 and in force since 2017, is named after the Japanese town where a factory's methylmercury discharge poisoned people who ate fish from the bay, a disease officially recognised in 1956. India ratified it in 2018.
• What it does. It covers mercury at every stage: no new primary mercury mines, phase out of mercury added products such as certain batteries, switches, lamps, cosmetics and non electronic thermometers, phase out of processes that use mercury, controls on emissions from coal plants, smelters and cement kilns, plans for small scale gold mining, and safe storage and disposal.

Dimensions

• Health. POPs and mercury cause cancers, damage to the developing brain, and harm to hormones and fertility, and the harm falls hardest on children, foetuses and people who eat a lot of fish, such as coastal and Arctic communities.
• Ecological. Biomagnification is why DDT thinned the eggshells of birds of prey, as Rachel Carson described in Silent Spring (1962), and why methylmercury concentrates in tuna and other large fish.
• Economic. Cheap pesticides and asbestos sheets serve poor farmers and households, so bans carry real costs; this is why developing countries ask for time, exemptions and money for alternatives.
• Equity. The trade in waste runs from rich to poorer countries, where labour and land are cheap and rules weak, and the Basel Ban Amendment and the plastic and electronic waste amendments are attempts to stop that flow.
• Legal. India's courts have built strong principles from chemical disasters: after the Bhopal gas leak of 1984, the Supreme Court in M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (oleum gas leak, 1987) laid down absolute liability for hazardous industries, with no exceptions.

In practice

• India's waste rules. The Hazardous and Other Wastes (Management and Transboundary Movement) Rules, 2016 implement Basel: import of hazardous waste for disposal is prohibited, import for recycling or reuse needs permission, and a 2019 amendment banned the import of solid plastic waste. The E-Waste (Management) Rules, 2022 run on extended producer responsibility; the solid and hazardous waste note covers them.
• India's POPs rules and its opt in. India ratified Stockholm with a declaration that new listings bind it only after it ratifies each one. In October 2020 the Cabinet approved ratification of seven chemicals listed after 2004, and the Regulation of Persistent Organic Pollutants Rules, 2018, under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, ban their manufacture, trade, use, import and export.
• Endosulfan. This pesticide, sprayed from the air on cashew plantations in Kasaragod in Kerala for years, was linked to birth defects and disease there. Stockholm listed it in 2011, and in Democratic Youth Federation of India v. Union of India the Supreme Court banned its production and use across India in 2011 and in 2017 ordered compensation of Rs 5 lakh to each victim.
• The 2025 listings. The joint Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conferences in Geneva in 2025 listed chlorpyrifos, a pesticide still widely used in India, together with long chain perfluorocarboxylic acids and medium chain chlorinated paraffins, in Annex A with exemptions. Because of its opt in declaration, these listings bind India only when it ratifies them.
• Dental amalgam. The sixth Minamata COP in November 2025 agreed to end the use of mercury dental amalgam by 2034.
• Ship recycling. The Hong Kong Convention on ship recycling, an International Maritime Organization treaty that India joined in 2019 along with its Recycling of Ships Act, 2019, came into force in June 2025, which matters because Alang in Gujarat is one of the world's largest shipbreaking yards.

Issues and way forward

• Consent is weak protection. Prior informed consent works only if the importing country has the laboratories, customs officers and data to judge a shipment, so capacity building and shared information matter more than new lists.
• Listing is slow and can be blocked. Rotterdam needs consensus and Stockholm reviews take years, so harmful chemicals stay in trade long after the science is clear; voting on listings where consensus fails is an option Parties have discussed.
• Illegal and disguised trade. Electronic waste and plastic waste are often shipped as "second hand goods" or "recyclables", and most of India's electronic waste is still handled by informal recyclers who burn and acid wash it without protection.
• Thousands of chemicals, few listed. The treaties cover a few dozen substances out of the many thousands in commerce, and the "forever chemicals" (per and polyfluoroalkyl substances) show how a whole family can escape control; the Global Framework on Chemicals adopted at Bonn in 2023, which replaced the older Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management, aims at the whole life cycle.
• Plastics outside the regime. Basel controls plastic waste trade but not plastic production, and talks on a global plastics treaty under UNEP did not conclude in 2024 or 2025; the plastic pollution note follows them.
• Way forward for India. Ratify the new POP listings with time bound alternatives for farmers, phase out chrysotile in public construction, bring informal electronic waste workers into the formal system, and build a national chemicals inventory so that rules rest on data.

Common confusions

• Basel and Rotterdam. Both use prior informed consent, but Basel covers wastes and Rotterdam covers chemicals and pesticides still in trade as products.
• Rotterdam and Stockholm. Rotterdam only makes trade transparent and leaves the choice to the importer, while Stockholm requires Parties to eliminate or restrict the listed chemicals themselves.
• Bioaccumulation and biomagnification. Bioaccumulation is the build up of a chemical inside one organism over its life, while biomagnification is the rise in concentration from one level of a food chain to the next.
• Basel Convention and Ban Amendment. The convention regulates waste trade by consent, while the Ban Amendment prohibits hazardous waste exports from rich to other countries and binds only those who ratify it.
• Minamata and Montreal. Minamata deals with mercury, a toxic metal; the Montreal Protocol deals with gases that deplete the ozone layer.

For the exam

• Keyword bank: transboundary movement, prior informed consent, environmentally sound management, Ban Amendment, Annex III chemicals, persistent organic pollutants, dirty dozen, biomagnification, acceptable purpose for DDT, opt in declaration, mercury added products, dental amalgam, extended producer responsibility, absolute liability, Hong Kong Convention.
• Previous year questions: Practise the previous year questions on this topic →
• Use in an answer:
  • Introduction with data: DDT concentration rises from about 0.003 parts per billion in water to about 25 parts per million in fish eating birds, a rise of nearly ten million times, which is why persistent chemicals need global and not national control.
  • Introduction with a judgement: In M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (1987) the Supreme Court held that an enterprise engaged in hazardous activity is absolutely liable for the harm it causes, a principle born of Bhopal and the oleum gas leak.
  • Conclusion: The chemicals conventions make dangerous trade visible and remove the worst substances, but their protection is only as strong as the customs posts, laboratories and waste systems of the countries that use them.
  • Conclusion: For India, ratifying new listings with alternatives for farmers and formalising its informal recyclers would turn treaty commitments into cleaner air, water and food.