Bangkok, February 17:

Japan’s search for an overseas site to unload the mountains of waste it generates is facing stiff resistance in Thailand, one of the many developing countries in South-east Asia that Tokyo has been eyeing as a possible dump.

The challenge posed by local environmentalists to this Japanese export gathered momentum this week as members of Thailand’s military-appointed National Legislative Assembly met to debate the planned Thai-Japan free trade agreement (FTA). Anti-FTA activists have also joined ranks with environmentalists, since this trade deal, which was debated on Thursday, includes a clause that confirms Japan’s intention to ship unlimited amount of its waste, including hazardous and toxic particles, as part of the new commercial agreement between the two countries.

Officials from Thailand’s foreign ministry have already confirmed to environmentalists the range of waste the country would have to shoulder from Asia’s richest industrialised nation. It includes hazardous items as slag, residues from incinerated municipal waste, residue from chemical and allied industries and hospital waste.

“We will be victimised by these trade polices pushed by industrialised countries,” Penchom Saetang, coordinator of the Campaign for Alternative Industry Network (CAIN), a Bangkok-based non-governmental organisation, said. “This is part of Japan’s plan to promote the waste recycling business in South-east Asia, including hazardous waste.”

Anti-FTA activists confirm that the opposition to the agreement’s provisions on waste will not be easy to side-step since it is one of two clauses that Thais feel they have more to lose than Japan. There is also local opposition to provisions in the deal over patent protection on domestic biotechnology products.

“Japan wants Thailand to reduce existing tariffs on the trade of waste products, making it easier for Japan to send its garbage here,” says Witoon Liancharoon, spokesman for FTA Watch, a lobby group campaigning against bilateral free trade deals. “This waste is to be recycled by Japanese companies to be set up here as part of the FTA.” Bangkok is also under pressure to give up its right to stop any incoming shipment of hazardous waste, he explained in an interview.

“The investment charter of the Thai-Japan FTA has many clauses protecting the Japanese investor involved in recycling hazardous waste. Thailand won’t be able to use any protections guaranteed under existing multilateral environment agreements if a problem occurs.” Tokyo’s quest for garb-age dumps in economically weaker South-east Asia is also manifest in an FTA between Japan and the Philippines, currently sent for approval to the Philippines Senate.

The deal must not be ratified unless “all nuclear and toxic waste dumping provisions are scrapped,” says a Greenpeace activist. “It is highly immoral and unjust for a rich country like Japan to dump its dangerous wastes on countries which neither have the me-ans nor the resources to manage their own waste problems.”

“Japan has to deal with its own hazardous waste within its own borders,” Von Hernandez, campaigns director for Greenpeace South-east Asia, said. “Why export Japan’s problems to other countries?” Japan is only one of many industrialised countries that have been exporting waste to South-east Asian countries, which has also included Indonesia as a receiving nation. Others who have done so under prevailing loopholes that permit some forms of waste being shipped for recycling include the US, Australia, Britain, New Zealand, Canada and South Korea.

The growing pressure on developing countries to accept harmful waste from industrialised nations goes against the Basel Convention, say environmentalists.