Thirteenth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention

Venue: Geneva International Conference Centre (CICG), 17 rue de Varembé, Geneva, Switzerland.

Summary of outcomes: About 1,400 participants took part in the Conference, which was held from 24 April to 5 May 2017, back-to-back with the eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Rotterdam Convention (RC COP-8) and the eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Stockholm Convention (SC COP-8). The meetings also featured a high-level segment that was held on the afternoon of Thursday, 4 May and the morning of Friday, 5 May 2017. The theme of the meetings and the high-level segment was "A future detoxified: sound management of chemicals and waste". The meetings included joint sessions among two or three of the conferences of the parties on joint issues.

The thirteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention adopted 24 decisions, including six identical ones for the three meetings of the conference of the Parties. Some of the main outcomes of the Conference included the adoption of six POPs wastes technical guidelines, the adoption of decisions on the follow-up to the Indonesian-Swiss country-led initiative, the Cartagena Declaration, national reporting, the Implementation and Compliance Committee, technical assistance, creating innovative solutions for the environmentally sound management of household waste, and the work programme and operations of the Open-ended Working Group for 2018 – 2019 which includes new areas of work such as on waste containing nanomaterials, marine plastic litter and micro-plastics, and electronic approaches to the notification and movement documents.

Thanks to voluntary contributions from the European Commission, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, financial support was provided to the participation of developing country Parties and Parties that are countries with economies in transition to attend the meetings.