Are we living in a post‐ B asel world?

The B asel C onvention (the C onvention) is a key piece of law governing the international waste trade. The spirit of the C onvention is to prohibit the dumping of hazardous waste from ‘developed’ countries to ‘developing’ countries. Yet, a careful consideration of the C onvention suggests a problematic geographical imaginary at work in it. It imagines a bi‐modal world comprised of what it calls A nnex VII countries ( O rganization for E conomic C ooperation and D evelopment ( OECD ), the E uropean C ommunity ( EC ) and L ichtenstein) and non‐ A nnex VII countries (all other signatories) and seeks to prohibit the shipment of hazardous waste from the former to the latter. In effect, what this geographical imaginary attempts to institute is a world of trade in which all non‐ A nnex VII territories are equally vulnerable to hazardous waste dumping from A nnex VII territories, but not vulnerable to such dumping amongst themselves. Yet, the non‐ A nnex VII grouping contains a hugely diverse set of countries, including the two largest non‐ A nnex VII economies, C hina and I ndia. Drawing on textual analysis of C onvention documents and trade data available for C hina and India, the paper engages with recent research into the growing role of ‘ S outh– S outh’ trade to critically engage with the geographical imaginary of the B asel C onvention. It suggests that as the global patterns of hazardous waste trade shift, the relevance of the B asel C onvention's geographical imaginary declines.