A major milestone for small island nation Antigua and Barbuda has emerged from global environmental negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland, as one of the country’s representatives earned a top leadership position at the 15th Open-ended Working Group of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal.
The four-day summit, held from June 23 to 26, brought two official delegates from Antigua and Barbuda to the negotiating table: Laël Bertide-Josiah, a microbiologist with the country’s Department of Analytical Services, and Nneka Nicholas, a Crown Counsel operating out of the Attorney General’s Chambers. By vote of attending international representatives, Nicholas was selected to serve as co-chair of the working group meeting, marking a notable recognition of the Caribbean nation’s growing role in global environmental governance.
Over the course of negotiations, delegates from across the globe hammered out policy frameworks to guide the work of the convention in the years leading up to the 18th Conference of the Parties, scheduled for 2027. The meeting closed with formal adoption of 19 binding decisions that cover a sweeping array of pressing waste management challenges.
These policy outcomes address critical operational and emerging issues, ranging from updates to the convention’s foundational prior informed consent procedure and standardized technical guidelines for waste disposal, to mandatory national reporting requirements and the rollout of modern electronic systems for tracking waste notification and movement documents. Negotiators also prioritized action on two fast-growing global waste streams: plastic pollution and discarded used textiles, alongside clarifying ambiguous legal language, expanding the scope of the Basel Convention Partnership Programme, and strengthening collaborative mechanisms with two key intergovernmental bodies, the World Customs Organization and the International Maritime Organization.
Bertide-Josiah contributed directly to deliberations focused on setting global standards for the environmentally sound management of both hazardous waste and other types of commercial and industrial waste, representing Antigua and Barbuda’s interests and priorities in these discussions.
In a post-meeting statement, Antigua and Barbuda’s Department of Analytical Services emphasized that the country’s active participation and the election of its delegate to a co-chair role underscores the nation’s long-standing, unwavering commitment to advancing multilateral environmental governance and advancing sustainable waste management practices through ongoing engagement with the Basel Convention framework.