At its fourth meeting, the expert working group on environmentally sound management considered and revised the draft practical manuals and fact sheets on environmentally sound management and agreed to finalise five manuals and six fact sheets for submission to and consideration by the tenth meeting of the Open-ended Working Group. The group also approved three new pilot projects and discussed an additional proposal for a pilot project designed to test the manuals and factsheets mentioned above. With regard to the Conference of the Parties’ mandate to establish a steering committee for pilot projects, as set out in decision BC-12/1 on follow-up to the Indonesian-Swiss country-led initiative to improve the effectiveness of the Basel Convention, the expert working group agreed to a draft structure for the approval and evaluation procedure of pilot projects to be finalised by the Secretariat based on comments received. Other areas of work addressed during the meeting included the need to explore connections with existing training programmes, further development of the group’s website, the possible development of an e-learning course, the further development of the draft inventory on Basel Convention documents relating to ESM, the development of a checklist for self-assessment of ESM capacity, as well as the development of guidance on waste prevention and minimisation, as mandated by decision BC-12/2 on the road map for action on the implementation of the Cartagena Declaration.
Request for information
The expert working group invited meeting participants to transmit information on their experience with strategies for promoting ESM in the informal sector by 24 December 2015. The submission deadline was subsequently extended to 1 June 2016.