Geneva, 27 June 2011
- Parties to a global treaty supporting
information exchange in international trade
of hazardous chemicals have acted to strengthen
protection of human
health and the environment by expanding
the exchange of critical safety information
between exporting and importing States.
Agreement was reached on Friday, 24 June
2011, at the conclusion of a week-long meeting
held in Geneva.
The fifth meeting of
the Conference of the Parties to the Rotterdam
Convention on the Prior Informed Consent
Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals
and Pesticides in International Trade agreed
by consensus to add three pesticides, alachlor,
aldicarb and endosulfan, to Annex III of
the Convention. Listing in Annex III triggers
an exchange of information between Parties
and helps countries make informed decisions
about future import and use of the chemicals.
"The agreement
on listing endosulfan coupled with decisions
to strengthen technical assistance and synergies
taken by the Parties to the Rotterdam Convention
demonstrate that increasing cooperation
between the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm
conventions is yielding a rich harvest of
benefits to countries by the protection
of public health and the environment globally,"
said Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General
and UNEP Executive Director.
Parties to the Stockholm
Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants
agreed earlier this year to eliminate endosulfan
from production and use globally.
The decisions to list
three chemicals were among 12 separate decisions
adopted at the conference aimed at strengthening
the globe's first line of defence for chemical
safety.
Amendments to the Convention
bringing the three new chemicals under the
Prior Informed Consent procedure will enter
into force on 24 October 2011. This will
raise the number of chemicals covered under
the Convention to forty-three.
"The addition of
these three chemicals marks the second time
since the Convention entered into force
that Parties have expanded the Convention's
list of substances covered by the Prior
Informed Consent procedure. This gives countries
that are considering importing hazardous
chemicals the right to know about the risks
they carry and how they can protect public
health and the environment, as well as the
means to protect against unwanted imports,"
said Jim Willis, Executive Secretary.
The conference agreed
to include endosulfan as a pesticide in
Annex III to the Convention as recommended
by the Chemical Review Committee, a scientific
expert body, at its second and sixth meetings.
This marked a breakthrough, as past conferences
had been unable to agree on inclusion of
the pesticide in Annex III. Countries will
now be provided with risk information allowing
them to make informed decisions on importation
of the hazardous chemical. The pesticides
alachlor and aldicarb were recommended by
the Chemical Review Committee at its fourth
meeting.
Agreement to list a
fourth chemical, chrysotile asbestos, eluded
the conference for the third time since
it was first recommended for listing by
the treaty's Chemical Review Committee in
2002. Debate over the recommended listing
of chrysotile asbestos drew widespread public
attention throughout a week of sometimes
tense negotiations between the Convention's
parties.
"The robust participation
of developing countries and countries with
economies in transition in the work of the
Rotterdam Convention has been on display
this past week, as they increasingly are
taking over the responsibility to assess
the risk attached to hazardous chemicals
and severely hazardous pesticide formulations",
said Peter Kenmore, Executive Secretary,
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
"The failure to find consensus on one
substance does not diminish this achievement."
Over 500 participants,
representing more than 135 governmental,
intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations
attended the fifth meeting of Conference
of the Parties to the Rotterdam Convention.
The meeting was held from 20 to 24 June
2011, in Geneva.
Note to Editors
The fifth meeting of
the Conference of the Parties to the Rotterdam
Convention met under the theme Rotterdam
COP5: PICturing Chemical Safety, PICturing
Informed Decisions.
The Rotterdam Convention
entered into force in 2004. It built on
the voluntary Prior Informed Consent, or
PIC, procedure, initiated by UNEP and FAO
in 1989, which gave way to the formalities
of the Convention. The Rotterdam Convention
was adopted in 1998 and entered into force
in 2004 and makes the PIC procedure legally
binding.
One-hundred forty-one
countries are currently Parties to the Convention.
Morocco and Russian Federation have deposited
instruments of ratification and will become
the 142nd and 143rd parties in July 2011.
Endosulfan has been
used for over 50 years to effectively control
several pests such as chewing, sucking and
boring insects. Due to its severe adverse
effects on health and environment, it is
banned in at least 60 countries including
the European Union, Australia and New Zealand,
as well as Asian and West African nations.
However it is still used in many other countries
on commercially important crops, such as
coffee and tea.
Chrysotile (serpentine
forms of asbestos) was proposed to be included
in the PIC procedure as an industrial chemical.
Its proposed listing at the conference was
based on the final regulatory actions to
ban or severely restrict its use due to
its impacts on health as notified by Australia,
Chile and the European Community.
