Fan Yuansheng, director of the Pollution Control Department of China's State Environmental Protection Administration and the Mike Chiu, deputy director of Environmental Protection of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, have signed the Cooperation Arrangement on Control of Waste Movements between the Mainland and HKSAR.

The aim is to better reflect the nature of cooperation by renaming the Memorandum of Understanding - Cooperation on Control of Waste Movements between the Mainland and HKSAR (MOU). The new name is the Cooperation Arrangement on Control of Waste Movements between the Mainland and HKSAR. Also included in the cooperation arrangement were supplementary provisions on applications and approval procedures regarding waste shipments to overseas countries via ports on the Mainland or the HKSAR.

A spokesman for EPD said that the MOU signed by the two parties in January 2000 had enhanced their cooperation in the control of waste movements between the two places. The requirements in the MOU were reportedly consistent with that of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, the spokesman said.

The MOU had not only provided a means of communication for the control departments of both governments, but had also served as a platform for combating illegal movements of waste between the two regions.