The sixteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention, the eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Rotterdam Convention and the eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Stockholm Convention were held from 1 May to 12 May 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland. The meetings were attended by approximately 2,000 delegates from more than 160 Parties, international organisations, non-governmental organisations and others from around the world.

Established in 1997, the Basel Convention Regional Centre for Asia and the Pacific (BCRC China) is one of the 14 Basel Convention Regional Centres and 16 Stockholm Convention Regional Centres in the world, and has been tasked with providing technical support to the Chinese delegation for the negotiations on the Basel Convention and related common issues. At the international level, BCRC China is responsible for promoting regional implementation of the Basel and Stockholm conventions and assisting developing countries and countries with economies in transition in the region to achieve the objectives of the conventions, with core functions including training, technology transfer, provision of information, advisory services and awareness-raising activities.

 BCRC China organized a delegation to participate in the Conference of the Parties, in which three BCRC China representatives participated as members of the Chinese delegation in the technical negotiations of the Basel Convention, the Stockholm Convention and matters common to the three conventions. Five undergraduate students from the International Class on Global Environment at the School of Environment, Tsinghua University, participated as observers of BCRC China.

On behalf of the Chinese Government, Nana Zhao, Assistant Director of BCRC China, together with representatives from Japan and the United Kingdom, took the lead in revising the Technical guidelines on the environmentally sound management of plastic wastes, which were submitted to the Conference of the Parties to the Basel Convention as an important issue. After 11 days of long and arduous negotiations, the technical guidelines were finally considered and adopted. The Executive Secretaries of the secretariats of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions and the representatives of the regions expressed their sincere gratitude to the lead countries for their hard work and believed that the guidelines would be a positive contribution to the management of plastic wastes and the protection of the environment in their respective countries. At the same time, the representatives of BCRC China had played an important role in the negotiations on issues such as the review of the Basel Convention annexes, technical assistance and partnerships for typical waste management.

The Conference of the Parties considered the reports on the assessment of the performance and sustainability of all operating Basel Convention regional centres (14 in total) and Stockholm Convention regional centres (16 in total) globally for the period 2019 - 2022. Once again, BCRC China received a score of 100 out of 100 in the assessments of both conventions, making it the only regional centre in the world to have received full scores in all previous (<2013-2014>, <2015-2018> and <2019-2022>) assessments of the two conventions.

The side event on ‘Innovative Practices in Environmentally Sound Management of Plastic Waste’, organized by BCRC China, was strongly supported by the Secretariat of the Convention and the Chinese Delegation, and attracted extensive attention and lively discussions among more than 100 participants from various countries both on-site and online, effectively promoting the practical experience of environmentally sound management of plastics waste and the construction of a ‘Zero-Waste City’ in China.