Radioactive Waste Disposal at Sea: Public Ideas ... - IMO

Looking Back and Looking Ahead
Conclusion 187
The global ocean dumping regime marks a significant step forward in
nations’ efforts to protect the oceans of the world. Thirty years ago some
parts of the oceans were seriously damaged. It was increasingly realized
that they could not absorb unlimited amounts of wastes safely. Competent
national agencies, monitoring, keeping records, and licensing dumping permits,
should together formulate policy for protection of the marine environment
against dumping.
The radwaste disposal ban has been a stumbling block within the global
ocean dumping regime. While some countries claimed victory, others reconsidered
their membership. But it has also been a revelation. To all, this experience
has illustrated that the world of science and technology is not one of
safety, absolutes, and hard facts, but rather one of risks, probabilities, and
uncertainty. 20 As chapter 8 showed, relying on science to provide conclusive
and unambiguous scientific evidence of environmental damage has turned
out to be much more difficult than the public and advocates of regulation
imagined. Moreover, because radwaste disposal raised sensitive political
and economical issues in many countries, decision making based solely on
marine scientific knowledge was inadequate. It produced controversial, not
consensual, policy.
The decision to globally ban radwaste disposal raises two significant
issues in environmental management: the advantages of following a comprehensive
approach and the inclusion of nonenvironmental concerns and
issues in environmental decision making. A 1996 protocol to the London
Convention shows that the members of the global ocean dumping regime,
in addition to emphasizing precaution and prevention, indeed intend to pay
more attention to these two issues in the future (LC 1997). 21
Comprehensiveness was one of the key concepts of the strategy to protect
the global environment laid out by the Stockholm secretariat in 1972.
The secretariat was aware that decisions and institutions might be shifting
problems into other sectors of the environment rather than coming to grips
with them. As a global management arrangement for a single waste-management
activity, the global ocean dumping regime could be shifting problems
around rather than “solving” them. Wastes that are not disposed of at
sea must ultimately be disposed of on land or in the air (by incineration).