13 March 2025, Rarotonga, Cook Islands – The work to protect the Pacific from hazardous and radioactive wastes continues to gain momentum, with the convening of the Tenth Meeting of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee (STAC-10) to the Waigani Convention at the conclusion of the two-day Sub-Regional Preparatory Meeting for the Triple Conferences of the Parties to the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm Conventions.
The Waigani Convention, formally known as the Convention to Ban the Importation into Forum Island Countries of Hazardous and Radioactive Wastes and to Control the Transboundary Movement and Management of Hazardous Wastes in the South Pacific Region, entered into force in 2001. The objective of the Convention is to reduce and eliminate transboundary movements of hazardous and radioactive waste, to minimise the production of hazardous and toxic wastes in the Pacific region, and to ensure that disposal of wastes in the Convention area is completed in an environmentally-sound manner.
The STAC is a subsidiary body of the Waigani Convention, which exists to assist the work of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), which is also the Secretariat of the Waigani Convention in driving the implementation of the Waigani Convention. It mirrors the STAC body of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal.
Mr. Anthony Talouli, SPREP’s Director of Waste Management and Pollution Control, said, “The difference between the Basel Convention and our regional Waigani Convention is that the Waigani also addresses nuclear transboundary waste movement. This is because when the Convention was formed, there were still nuclear tests being conducted in the region and so the Parties included nuclear waste to address this.”
He added that the STAC was established because Pacific Members and Parties have struggled when it comes to scientific and technical issues surrounding hazardous and radioactive wastes.
“Ideally, the STAC meetings are where the Parties send their scientific and technical experts from their respective research and scientific institutions. The conversations and discussions that take place in these meetings will then enable these experts to advise their officials on issues such as chemicals and different types of Persistent Organic Pollutants. The STAC is from whence they receive that advice,” Mr. Talouli said.
“It is an opportunity to bring Parties together outside of the COP to check on their progress, but also to see if any assistance is needed to implement the Convention if they don’t have the capacity within their countries. We can reach out to the BRS Secretariat for assistance, and we can also seek help from Australia and New Zealand who are also Parties to the Waigani Convention.
The STAC-10 discussions will be centered around the implementation of the recommendations of the 2021 Review of the Waigani Convention, as well as the implementation of the Amendments to the Waigani Convention which were approved at the previous Waigani Convention COP in 2023.
The amendments are the inclusion of electronic wastes and plastic wastes into the Waigani Convention. Parties need to ratify these to be brought into force, and Mr Talouli recognises that there will be a lot of work needed to get countries to ratify and put into their national legislations to monitor the movement of plastic and electronic wastes.
The STAC is mandated to meet every two years prior to the convening of a meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Waigani Convention, which will be held in September this year. The last meeting of the STAC was in 2023.
The Parties to the Waigani Convention and thus the Membership of the STAC include Australia, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, New Zealand, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Tuvalu. Nauru and Palau have signed the Convention but have not yet ratified.
For more information, please contact Mr. Anthony Talouli, at anthonyt@sprep.org or Ms. Kathleen Taitu’ave-Afereti at kathleent@sprep.org.