Developing guidelines for environmentally sound management

The Framework for the environmentally sound management (ESM) of hazardous wastes and other wastes establishes a common understanding of what ESM encompasses and identifies tools and strategies to promote the implementation of ESM.

At the time of the adoption of the ESM Framework at the eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention, Parties saw the need for further action to be taken in order to promote and implement the Framework and ESM in general.

The Conference of the Parties, in its decision BC-11/1 on Follow-up to the Indonesian-Swiss country-led initiative to improve the effectiveness of the Basel Convention, thus mandated an expert working group to further elaborate and implement actions on initial short-term work items as listed in annex II to that decision, within available resources, and to develop a work programme for additional priorities and key work items and actions for the implementation of environmentally sound management.

The twelfth meeting of the Conference of the Parties, in its decision BC-12/1, welcomed the work undertaken by the expert working group, adopted its work programme, extended its mandate, and reiterated the invitation to parties and others to submit information on activities to ensure environmentally sound management of hazardous and other wastes.

Successive meetings of the Conference of the Parties have considered, and where appropriate, adopted, the tools developed as part of the expert working group’s work programme, which now comprise the ESM Toolkit.

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