The Recycling of Hazardous Electronic Waste Case Study - Social Science Assignment Help

Assignment Task -

The call for recycling nearly all consumer products has spawned a new industry – one that focuses on the recycling of hazardous electronic waste including used electronic equipment, computers, monitors, and batteries to extract precious and industrial metals and materials.

Legitimate recyclers on both sides of the Atlantic have invested hundreds of millions of dollars and Euros to build recycling plants to extract precious and reusable metals and materials from electronic waste while containing the spread of hazardous materials such as heavy metals, lead, acid, and other toxins. For example, lead battery recyclers in the United States and Europe operate in sealed, highly mechanized plants similar to laboratories working with dangerous substances. Their smokestacks are fitted with scrubbers, and their perimeters are surrounded by lead-monitoring devices. But constructing and operating these plants in developed countries are very expensive and while governments around the world have mandated electronic waste recycling, another industry has emerged: one that exports hazardous electronic waste to other countries, mostly developing or least developed countries – legally and illegally, depending on the country. This has created a diplomatic, political, economic, health, and environmental negotiation dilemma for a number of developed as well as developing nations.

In the United States and Europe, consumers are encouraged to turn in used electronic equipment and batteries for recycling at electronic retailers and recycling centers. In many instances, the waste goes to legitimate recycling plants where they are processed in a safe manner. But in other cases, the prospect of making large profits from shipping electronic waste to developing and least developed countries for processing has created a parallel industry where safety and environmental safeguards are either not in place or are rarely enforced.

The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, also known as the Basel Convention, is an international treaty that was designed to reduce the movements of hazardous waste between nations, and specifically to prevent transfer of hazardous waste from developed countries to developing and least developed countries (LDCs). The Convention entered into force in 1992 and while there are 175 parties to the Convention, three nations including Afghanistan, Haiti, and the United States have NOT ratified the Convention.

Despite this international treaty, the trafficking in hazardous electronic waste and lead-acid batteries has been growing every year. From Western Europe, traffickers move hazardous electronic waste to sub-Saharan Africa and even to China. In the United States, the situation is even worse – because the US is not a signatory to the Basel Convention, hazardous electronic waste moves legally and virtually unabated into Mexico and other countries in Central America.

Please send the Home Office a concise memo of between 500-1000 words, which addresses the following:

1) Suggestions for priority agenda items, and the order in which they should be considered;

2) An estimated BATNA for each of the parties attending the conference (including Nigeria), and;

 3) Three suggested tools of Talk Power which might be deployed in the interest of advancing Nigeria’s proposed negotiating strategy. 

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