Cairo Guidelines on Waste Trading (UN)

The united nations environment program (unep) adopted the Cairo Guidelines and Principles for the Environmentally Sound Management of Hazardous Wastes, or Cairo Guidelines on Waste Trading, in 1987. The guidelines dealt with the nature and transport of hazardous wastes, primarily by sea, and the informed consent to be given by states through whose territory the waste passed and the prior notification that states were to receive. These guidelines were necessary to regulate the increasing flows of such wastes and their often-toxic nature. Maritime trade had also become an almost entirely globalized industry with regulations almost impossible to enforce. Concern had been raised in 1981 at the Ad Hoc Meeting of Senior Government Officials Expert in Environmental Law that was held in Montevideo, and gave rise ...