'Basel Convention', 'Rotterdam Convention' and 'Stockholm Convention' relate to which of the following?

Correct — B, Management of Pollutants. All three named treaties belong to the chemicals-and-waste family of multilateral environmental agreements. Basel controls the movement of hazardous wastes across national borders and their disposal; Rotterdam governs trade in hazardous chemicals and pesticides through a prior informed consent procedure; Stockholm requires parties to eliminate or restrict a listed set of persistent organic pollutants. They are administered from a joint secretariat in Geneva and their conferences of the parties meet back to back, which is why they are so often cited as a trio. Nothing in any of the three concerns prisoners, wetlands or rivers.

• (a)Human Rights of Prisoners — The human rights of prisoners are dealt with by instruments such as the standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners, which are of an entirely different family and are not named after any of these cities.
• (c)Conservation of Wetlands — Wetland conservation is the subject of the Ramsar Convention of 1971, signed in the Iranian city of Ramsar — a single treaty, not this trio.
• (d)Conservation of Rivers — There is no international convention of this group directed at river conservation; river basins are governed by bilateral or basin-specific treaties instead.

Three separate treaties cover the life cycle of hazardous substances. Rotterdam catches them as they are traded, Stockholm catches a defined list of them in production and use, and Basel catches them once they have become waste. Together they are usually described as the chemicals and waste cluster, and because their coverage overlaps at the edges the parties chose to run them through one secretariat rather than three.

This paper asks the same question twice at different depths. Question 95 requires the exact pairing of four conventions with four themes, including Minamata; this one only requires the family they belong to. That is a common examination pattern and it is worth using — a candidate who is not sure whether Rotterdam is trade or waste can still answer this item correctly, because the alternatives on offer here are prisoners, wetlands and rivers rather than three shades of chemical regulation.

• Basel Convention, 1989 — transboundary movement of hazardous wastes and their disposal.
• Rotterdam Convention, 1998 — prior informed consent for trade in certain hazardous chemicals and pesticides.
• Stockholm Convention, 2001 — elimination or restriction of persistent organic pollutants.
• The three share a joint secretariat at Geneva and hold back-to-back conferences of the parties.
• The Ramsar Convention, 1971, is the wetlands treaty, and the Minamata Convention, 2013, is the mercury treaty — neither is part of this trio.

• Assuming that a treaty named after a European city must be about human rights.
• Confusing Stockholm the convention with the Stockholm Conference of 1972, which produced the Declaration on the Human Environment and led to the United Nations Environment Programme.
• Adding Minamata to the trio; it is a fourth, later treaty on mercury and is administered separately.

As a one-line grouping question, easier than the four-by-four match on the same conventions that appears elsewhere in this very paper.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Ramsar Convention of 1971 relates to the conservation of

  • (a)wetlands
  • (b)migratory birds only
  • (c)coral reefs
  • (d)tropical forests

  Answer(a) wetlands — signed at Ramsar in Iran, and the reason 2 February is observed as World Wetlands Day.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Stockholm Conference of 1972 is best remembered for

  • (a)creating the World Trade Organization
  • (b)the Declaration on the Human Environment and the founding of the United Nations Environment Programme
  • (c)adopting the Kyoto Protocol
  • (d)listing the first World Heritage Sites

  Answer(b) the Declaration on the Human Environment and the founding of the United Nations Environment Programme.