Session 2: Environmental Justice and Nuclear Waste

Zada Lipman - Globalisation, Environmental Justice and the Hazardous Waste Trade
Associate Professor of Law, Macquarie University, Sydney; Associate Director, Centre for Environmental Law

An increasingly globalised economy, poses new challenges for environmental policy, both nationally and internationally. In the last two decades, a particular concern for the international community has been the generation and transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their impact on developing countries. The most important international response to these problems is the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal 1989 (effective 1992). In 1995 the Convention was amended to impose a ban on hazardous waste exports from OECD to non-OECD countries. The ban has been widely lauded as a landmark for global democracy and environmental justice, yet six years later, it has received only 26 of the 62 ratifications need to bring it into force. Surprisingly, only half of these ratifications are from developing countries who had been pressing for a total ban on hazardous waste exports and for whose benefit the ban had been adopted.

This paper examines the factors that influence the formation of environmental policy and ultimately trigger collective global action and the adoption of multilateral environmental conventions. Using the hazardous waste trade as a case study, the paper discusses the tension between environment protection and economic considerations. The paper outlines the problems caused by hazardous waste exports to developing countries and the market logic that drives these exports. The paper argues that non-ratification of the ban highlights the difficulties facing both national and international communities in successfully implementing environmental policies. These difficulties are not limited to economic factors, but involve a complex mix of political and social factors, combined with a lack of institutional and technical support. The paper suggests a number of mechanisms that could be used to resolve some of these problems. These include the imposition of responsibilities on multi-national companies and access to, and transfer of technology to developing countries.

Jouni Ponnikas - The Role of Local Inhabitants in Decision-making : a Case of Nuclear Waste Disposal
Department of Educational Sciences and Teacher Education, PO BOX 2000, FIN-90014 University of Oulu, FINLAND

My research question is how citizens' empowerment could take care of in the decision-making concerning the needs of the present and future generations. The example case is the nuclear waste disposal in Finland. Citizens' empowerment requires an open and democratic administration system. That kind of administration system gives to people equal opportunities and access to expertise and knowledge and the capacity to affect the decisions which affect them (see for example Arnstein 1969; Barber 1984; Rogers & Ryan 2001). The empirical research material used in this study consists of the answers from the survey, which was carried out in Eurajoki, Loviisa and Äänekoski, which are municipalities in Finland and the candidates for the place of the disposal of nuclear waste. After my research Eurajoki was chosen as the place. Radwaste disposal is a very complex issue. The nuclear waste needs to be stored in a very safe way for a time-span far beyond human understanding. Nuclear waste is one of the risks produced by the modern societies (see Beck 1999). The concept of 'risk' is at the core of the nuclear power issues (see Litmanen 2001). That is why the decision-making process of nuclear waste disposal should be very open to public participation. An Environmental Impact Assessment process and a consultative municipal referendum are useful means for widening the civil participation to the process of nuclear waste disposal. These methods give the local inhabitants, living near to the site of disposal, a chance to get their voice heard. This is how also citizens' empowerment could be realised more fully than by using only representative procedures

References:

Arnstein, Sherry R. (1969): A Ladder of Citizen Participation. Journal
of the American Planning Association. Vol. 35. No. 4. July 1969.

Barber, Benjamin (1984): Strong Democracy. Participatory Politics for
a New Age. University of California Press. California.

Beck, Ulrich (1999): World Risk Society. Polity press. Cornwall.

Litmanen, Tapio (2001): The Struggle Over Risk: The Spatial, Temporal,
and Cultural Dimensions of Protest against Nuclear Technology.
University of Jyväskylä.

Rogers, Maureen & Ryan, Roberta (2001): The Triple Bottom Line for
Sustainable Community Development. Local Environment. Volume 6. Number
3. November 2001.