PUNTA DEL ESTE, URUGUAY, June 20, 2025 — The negotiations to establish a Science-Policy Panel on chemicals, waste, and pollution concluded today. Over the last three years, Member States have been negotiating the details of how the Panel — originally envisaged as an IPCC for chemicals and waste, and pollution prevention — will operate. However, the finalized document is a shell of an agreement, with many elements still undecided.
Arriving at the resumed third session of the Open-Ended Working Group to establish the panel (OEWG-3.2) and the Intergovernmental Meeting that followed it, Member States were supposed to finalize the foundational document outlining the panel’s scope and its future functioning, as well as the Rules of Procedure. Leaving Uruguay, the foundational document establishing the Panel was effectively adopted, but with core aspects in brackets, indicating that they have yet to be decided. Other essential documents, such as the conflict of interest policy, process for determining the work program, and prioritization framework, and guidance for dealing with Confidential Business Information — which is necessary to respond to chemical industry claims that they must protect business secrets — have been forwarded to the first meeting of the Panel, all but ensuring that it will be years before it is functional.
Throughout the week, Member States made critical concessions compromising the Panel’s integrity. This is epitomized by the decision to make all future decisions about the Panel by consensus, ensuring that the same obstructionism that dominated OEWG-3.2 and the Intergovernmental Meeting will continue in years to come and effectively neutering the Panel’s efficacy by allowing one country to veto every decision, in particular limiting transparency and ensuring adequate protection against conflict of interests.
Rachel Radvany, Environmental Health Campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) reflected, “This week, we also saw a handful of countries use every delay tactic in their arsenal, including bringing their culture-war-fueled agenda to the floor of the negotiating rooms. It’s beyond absurd that in a Panel envisaged to address chemicals, pollution prevention, and waste, protecting health and the environment remains controversial and has yet to be decided. These are monkey wrenches being thrown to prevent the world from coming together to effectively make recommendations to help policymakers protect human rights and the environment from pollution.”
At the conclusion of the negotiations, CIEL’s Environmental Health Program Director David Azoulay remarked, “Recent multilateral chemicals negotiations have become a testing ground for plummeting ambition. . There are pathways out of this madness — multilateralism allows for voting when attempts at consensus have failed, which should be used when countries negotiate in bad faith. The question is if — and when — the rest of the world will wake up and take these steps. For agreements that are still being written, including the Global Plastics Treaty, it is not too late.”
Giulia Carlini, CIEL Senior Attorney and Environmental Health Program Manager, concluded, “Regardless of OEWG-3.2 and the Intergovernmental Meeting’s outcomes, the world has enough information to know that we must take bold action to protect human health and the environment from toxic chemicals, waste, and pollution. We are still years away from seeing the results of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Chemicals, Waste and Pollution. But this should not be an excuse for delay. We know what it takes to protect human health, human rights, and the environment: eliminating hazardous chemicals such as PFAS, highly hazardous pesticides, and endocrine disruptors today.”
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