May 12, 2023
Geneva (CH) — States at the United Nations Triple Conferences of the Parties to the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm Conventions (BRS COPs) made progress on key issues related to chemicals management. Parties voted to ban three highly toxic chemicals and introduce compliance mechanisms after more than 15 years of inaction. However, they once again failed to uphold the right to know, improve information sharing among countries regarding the trade of health-threatening substances, and they kicked the can down the road on several critical issues.
Progress at the BRS COPs provides a lesson for future negotiations — including those on the plastics treaty — on how to protect the health of communities and the planet.
At the conclusion of the BRS COPs, members of the CIEL delegation issued the following statements on each of the Conventions:
Stockholm Convention
Giulia Carlini, CIEL’s Senior Attorney:
“We applaud States’ decision to globally ban a harmful pesticide and two persistent organic pollutants (POPs), both of which are used in plastics. This is a win for people’s health and the environment, and it provides critical recognition that the toxic impacts of plastics have no borders.
“These decisions reaffirm, yet again, the need for a global legally binding instrument that addresses the entire lifecycle of plastics. In two weeks, States will reconvene for the plastics treaty negotiations, where they have the historic opportunity to complement this effort and truly protect people’s health by developing robust criteria for detoxifying the plastics lifecycle. We’re calling on States to match the ambition displayed at the BRS COPs and ensure that people’s health is placed over profits.”
Basel Convention
Andres del Castillo, CIEL’s Senior Attorney
“We welcome the adoption of the plastic waste technical guidelines that will bring some guidance to member States on how to safely deal with plastic waste. The guidelines help lay the groundwork for stronger, more effective guidelines in the years ahead and will both complement and inform upcoming negotiations for a future plastics treaty. After years of advocacy by civil society groups, many delegates are finally realizing that industry-peddled ‘solutions’ to the plastics crisis, including chemical recycling, are part of a strategy to keep producing plastics and protect corporate profits. While the Guidelines were adopted, the portion on ‘chemical recycling’ remains in brackets, highlighting that this technology cannot be considered an environmentally sound method of plastic waste management.“
Rotterdam Convention
David Azoulay, CIEL’s Director of the Environmental Health Program,
“For many years now, the Rotterdam Convention has been hijacked by a few countries, favoring narrow national and/or corporate interests and blocking action to include harmful chemicals such as chrysotile asbestos, acetochlor, carbosulfan, fenthion, and paraquat under the Convention. The listing of these harmful chemicals would, at minimum, have implemented the right to information on their toxicity but was blocked again this year.
“Today, the same few countries succeeded in blocking an ambitious proposal that would have allowed the Convention to finally wake up from its coma and adopt decisions despite the oppositions of a small number of parties. It’s a sad day for the health and lives of workers, farmers, and citizens around the world and a failure to protect the right to know of communities. However, we are encouraged to see that 70% of the States supported the proposal, even if it would have needed 75% to be accepted.”
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Media contact:
Rossella Recupero, Communications Associate, press(at)ciel.org
Photo credits: Photo by IISD/ENB