MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 32 of 100

Correct — option (4), March 1989 - Switzerland. The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal was opened for signature on 21 March 1989 at Basel in Switzerland, and it entered into force on 5 May 1992. Both blanks in the stem are therefore filled by the same option, and the second of them is given away by the treaty's own name: like almost every multilateral environmental agreement, it is called after the city where it was concluded, and Basel is a Swiss city on the Rhine. The convention was negotiated in response to a specific scandal of the 1980s, when hazardous waste from industrialised countries was being shipped for cheap disposal to poorer ones, sometimes under the description of recycling and sometimes simply dumped — the voyages of the Khian Sea and the Koko incident in Nigeria being the cases that forced the issue. Its object, as the stem itself says, is to reduce the movement of hazardous waste from developed to less developed countries, and it does so mainly through a prior informed consent procedure: a state may not export hazardous waste unless the importing state has been notified in writing and has consented in writing, and the exporting state must take the waste back if the shipment cannot be completed as agreed. It has 191 parties as of June 2024. Five United Nations members have not ratified it — East Timor, Fiji, Haiti, South Sudan and the United States — and the same list is worth carrying, because the American position recurs in questions on other environmental treaties.

• (1)March 1999 - Germany — The year is a decade too late and the country is wrong. The convention was concluded in March 1989 and had already entered into force in May 1992, so nothing could have been signed into existence in March 1999. Germany is not the venue either, and the treaty's own name settles that: these conventions are named for the city where they were adopted, and Basel is in Switzerland. The option is built to catch a candidate who remembers only that the Basel Convention belongs to the late twentieth century and that Germany is a large European country associated with environmental regulation — a plausible but unfounded pair of impressions. When a treaty is named after a place, the place is the first thing to fix, because it settles one blank without any recall of dates.
• (2)April 1980 - Japan — April 1980 predates the negotiation of the convention altogether: the transboundary waste scandals that produced it belong to the middle and late 1980s, and the text was opened for signature in March 1989. Japan is the wrong country and is worth separating carefully, because Japan does host two major environmental agreements — the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases, adopted in 1997, and the Minamata Convention on mercury, named for the city whose mercury poisoning gave the world the disease of that name. Neither is about the transboundary movement of hazardous waste in general. Keeping a short table of convention, city and country is the surest defence against a question of this construction, since the wrong options are always drawn from other treaties' venues.
• (3)May 1979 - Norway — May 1979 is a full decade before the convention was opened for signature, and Norway is not its venue. The option pairs an early date with a Scandinavian country, which is plausible only as an impression — northern Europe did lead early work on transboundary pollution — but the Basel Convention is a 1989 instrument concluded in Switzerland. It is worth noting that the month in this option, May, does belong to the Basel story, but to a different event: the convention entered into force on 5 May 1992, three years after it was signed. Adoption and entry into force are separate dates for every treaty, and confusing them is one of the commonest errors in this part of the syllabus.

The Basel Convention is one of a cluster of chemical and waste treaties that examiners test together, and each is named after the city where it was adopted. Basel, opened for signature on 21 March 1989 and in force from 5 May 1992, governs the transboundary movement and disposal of hazardous wastes; its central mechanism is prior informed consent, backed by a duty on the exporting state to take back a shipment that cannot be disposed of as agreed. The Ban Amendment, adopted in 1995, goes further and prohibits the export of hazardous waste from developed countries to developing ones. In May 2019 the parties agreed to bring most plastic scrap within the convention's controls, an amendment binding on 186 states and one that reshaped the global waste-paper and plastic trade from January 2021. Alongside Basel sit the Rotterdam Convention, which applies prior informed consent to trade in hazardous chemicals and pesticides; the Stockholm Convention, which restricts persistent organic pollutants; and the Minamata Convention, which covers mercury. India is a party to Basel and regulates the subject domestically through the Hazardous and Other Wastes (Management and Transboundary Movement) Rules, made under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.

MPSC keeps a steady share of its environment questions for international conventions, and it tests them on the fixed attributes — the year, the city, the country, the subject matter and occasionally the entry into force. Those facts do not change, which is why they are examinable, and they are almost always tested through the pairing of a treaty with a place or a date. This question uses the two-blank form, which is the easiest version of the type, because either blank can be answered from the other: a candidate who knows the treaty is Swiss can eliminate three options at once without knowing any date, and a candidate who knows the year 1989 can do the same without knowing the city. That symmetry is the reason to attack a two-blank question from whichever half is stronger. The other lesson is to keep adoption separate from entry into force. Basel was signed in March 1989 and came into force in May 1992, and a question that asks for one while the candidate recalls the other will be answered wrongly with complete confidence.

• The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal was opened for signature on 21 March 1989 at Basel, Switzerland, and entered into force on 5 May 1992.
• Its purpose is to reduce movements of hazardous waste between nations and specifically to stop transfers from developed to less developed countries; it works through a prior informed consent procedure.
• The convention had 191 parties as of June 2024; five United Nations members are not parties — East Timor, Fiji, Haiti, South Sudan and the United States.
• The Ban Amendment of 1995 prohibits the export of hazardous waste from developed to developing countries, and the plastic waste amendments agreed in May 2019 brought most plastic scrap under the convention's controls, binding on 186 states.
• The companion treaties are Rotterdam for prior informed consent on hazardous chemicals and pesticides in trade, Stockholm for persistent organic pollutants, and Minamata for mercury.

• Confusing the date of adoption with the date of entry into force; Basel was opened for signature in March 1989 and entered into force in May 1992, and both dates appear in questions
• Attaching a convention to the wrong host country when several treaties are named for cities — Basel is Swiss, Rotterdam Dutch, Stockholm Swedish, Minamata and Kyoto Japanese, Montreal Canadian
• Assuming Basel covers all waste; it covers hazardous and certain other wastes, with plastic scrap brought in only by the 2019 amendments
• Treating the Ban Amendment as part of the original convention; it was adopted separately in 1995 and goes further than the parent treaty's consent procedure

International environmental conventions appear in MPSC papers as fill-in-the-blank items of this kind, as one-line questions asking which convention deals with a named subject, and as matching questions pairing conventions with their subjects or their host cities. Occasionally the Commission asks about a specific mechanism — prior informed consent, common but differentiated responsibilities, extended producer responsibility — or about India's position as a party. A single table listing about fifteen conventions with subject, city, country, year adopted and year in force answers nearly all of these, and it is worth adding, for each treaty, one recent development such as the Basel plastic amendments, because that is where a current-affairs question would attach.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Basel Convention, opened for signature in 1989, deals primarily with which subject?

  • (a)persistent organic pollutants
  • (b)the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes and their disposal
  • (c)trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora
  • (d)the reduction of mercury emissions

  Answer(b) the transboundary movement of hazardous wastes and their disposal — the convention was adopted at Basel in Switzerland on 21 March 1989 and entered into force on 5 May 1992, and it aims specifically to stop shipments of hazardous waste from developed to less developed countries through a prior informed consent procedure. Persistent organic pollutants are the subject of the Stockholm Convention, trade in endangered species of CITES, and mercury of the Minamata Convention.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following pairs of environmental convention and the country in which it was adopted is correctly matched?

  • (a)Basel Convention — Germany
  • (b)Minamata Convention — Sweden
  • (c)Rotterdam Convention — the Netherlands
  • (d)Stockholm Convention — Switzerland

  Answer(c) Rotterdam Convention — the Netherlands. Rotterdam is a Dutch port city, and the convention adopted there applies the prior informed consent procedure to international trade in hazardous chemicals and pesticides. The Basel Convention on hazardous wastes was adopted at Basel in Switzerland, the Minamata Convention on mercury at Kumamoto in Japan, and the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants in Sweden.