Thailand attended the 15th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Basel Convention, the 10th Meeting of the COP to the Rotterdam Convention, and the 10th Meeting of the COP to the Stockholm Convention, from 6 to 17 June 2022, in Geneva, Switzerland. H.E. Warawut Silpa-archa, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment, assigned Mr. Athapol Charoenshunsa, Director General of Pollution Control Department (PCD) to be head of the Thai delegation together with the Chairman of the sub-committees on three conventions, representative of the Ministry of Industry, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment to join the meeting.
Mr. Athapol Charoenshunsa, Director General of PCD, said that the resolution of the meeting of the COP to the 15th Basel Convention consisted of a) adding the list of waste from electrical and electronic equipments with high content of hazardous substances as wastes that must be subject to the prior inform consent of the importing state and any state of transit before transboundary movement, b) certification of technical guidelines on hazardous waste incineration in industrial furnaces, sanitary landfill disposal, mercury waste management and Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), and c) improvement of technical standards for used car tires, lead-acid battery, and plastic waste in order to take into account by the Parties.
Mr. Athapol also said that regarding to the 10th Meeting of the COP to the Rotterdam Convention, Thailand’s expert (Dr. Palap Singhaseni) has been appointed as a member of the Chemical Review Committee (CRC). The agenda on the consideration of adding list of chemicals in Annex3 which subject to prior inform consent procedure and the agenda on the proposal of the African countries that seek for special finance support have been postponed to the next COP’s meeting. The 10th Meeting of the COP to the Stockholm Convention, the meeting added Perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS) in Annex A, without notable exceptions. Consequently, the Parties have to phase out and get rid of it, including Thailand.
At the meeting, the Thai delegation expressed the country’s position and made intervention on the issues related to the subject of the three conventions in accordance with national policies and actions, such as ban on importing E – waste, restricting the import of plastic scraps to support using plastic scraps within the country, considerations of reducing use of highly hazardous substances, persistent organic pollutants, and ozone depleting substances.
The next meetings of the COP to the three Conventions are scheduled to be held in May 2023 in the Bahamas, Mr. Athapol said.
