From Europe, to the Agbogbloshie Scrapyard

Sammanfattning: The challenge of sound e-waste treatment is something that is a global concern when relating to good business practices, safe working conditions, information security and environment. This research applies a holistic view of the illegal trade of e-waste from Europe to Ghana by aiming to highlight some of its drivers. By applying an adapted RV-model to identify the actors engaged in smuggling and rational choice theory to analyse market incentives this research identifies legal and procedural weaknesses that enable the illegal shipment of e-waste. The actors identified to target West Africa was in general smaller groups. These groups have established routes and transit points that complicate the international coordination of enforcers and inhibit their capacity to build strong cases against criminals. They target countries within the EU with limited enforcement capacity, high shipping volumes and low penalty rates for environmental crimes to exploit the domestic responsibility of enforcement and sentencing. They also mask e-waste as used electronics which is not heavily regulated and for which there is a strong Ghanaian market demand and employs a large number of workers in the informal sector, with the supply chain with an estimated 200,000 people employed. The main problems identified was enforcement procedures, international and domestic coordination, relative cost for formal recycling, lack of alternatives for workers and officials as well lack of deterring sentencing. This has led to secondary effects such as poor environmental and health protection as well as physical- and data-security.