Toxic exports

by Jennifer Clapp

"In recent years, International trade in toxic waste and hazardous technologies by firms in rich industrialized countries has emerged as a routine practice. Many poor countries have accepted these deadly imports but are ill equipped to manage the materials safely. For more than a decade, environmentalists and the governments of developing countries have lobbied intensively and generated public outcry in an attempt to halt hazardous transfers from Northern industrialized nations to the Third World, but the practice continues. In her insightful and important book, Jennifer Clapp addresses this alarming problem.". "Clapp describes the responses of those engaged in hazard transfer to international regulations, and in particular to the 1989 adoption of the Basel Convention. She pinpoints a key weakness of the regulations - because hazard transfer is dynamic, efforts to stop one form to toxic export prompt new forms to emerge. For instance, laws intended to ban the disposal of toxic wastes i