By our Staff Writer
Liberia’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has begun an exercise aimed at identification preliminary Gaps leading to the development of sustainable Inventory of Hazardous and other wastes entering Liberia.
The EPA in collaboration with United Nations Environment Program and the Basel Convention has ended a one-day inception workshop on hazardous waste in the capital, Monrovia.
It was intended to assess Liberia’s legal and institutional frameworks.
The inception workshop discussed several topics including hazardous waste classification under the Basel Convention, Assessment of Liberia’s Legal and institutional frame work for the implementation and compliance with the Basel Convention and findings.
The Basel convention on the Control of Trans boundary u Movement of Hazardous Waste and their Disposal was adopted on 22nd of March 1989 by the conference of plenipotentiaries in Basel, Switzerland..
It was 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 imported from abroad.
In a Special message delivered at the start of the workshop, the Country Director of United Development Program, Dr. Pa Lamin Beyai spoke of the need for Liberia to create more awareness on the dangers of hazardous waste.
Dr. Beyai indicated that when environmental awareness on hazardous waste is weak and regulations are lacking, some organizations take advantage of the situation to seek cheap disposal options of hazardous waste.
Putting in place a regulatory frame work to properly monitor waste in Liberia is keen in the implementation of the Basel Convention, Dr. Beyai said.
The UNDP Country Director called for a robust awareness strategy to be adopted in order to inform the public on hazardous waste.
He said to be able to accomplish this aim, everyone has a stake in the process and pledged the UNDP’s support to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Government of Liberia to help it achieve its aims and provisions of the Basel Convention.
Providing an overview of the workshop, Basel Focal Person and Assistant EPA Manager for Planning and Policy, Jefferson Nyandibo said the overarching objective of the Basel Convention is to protect human health and the environment against the adverse effects of hazardous wastes.
The Basel Focal person indicated that inception workshop will put in place necessary formalities to conduct an inventory on hazardous waste entering the Republic of Liberia.
Other topic discussed at the just-ended inception workshop are Introduction on the Methodological guide for undertaking National inventories under the Basel Convention and presentation of a draft report, National reporting Standards and procedures under the Basel convention..
The one-day inception brought both state actors, the private sector and international organizations together including World Bank, United Nations Environmental Program European Union among others.