The slowdown of activities during a warm August (for those of us in the northern hemisphere) provides a moment to reflect on the current state of the international chemicals and wastes landscape before the more usual hectic pace quickly resumes, with a number of key events taking place on the international calendar during the remaining months of 2014 and into 2015. This article will seek to build on several astute observations made by previous authors in this series, as well as provide some additional thoughts, in particular noting three main challenges for the current and future international chemicals and wastes landscape.

As highlighted by Franz Perrez (Guest article #1), the chemicals and wastes regime has been gradually building and the newest addition to the chemicals and wastes family, the Minamata Convention on Mercury (adopted in October 2013), was rightfully hailed as the first environment and health treaty in over a decade. There is now a concerted effort to bring the Convention – which currently has 102 signatories and 1 ratification – into effect as quickly as possible in order to avoid a lengthy “interim period” before the text becomes legally binding, an issue which some of its older siblings experienced. The Rotterdam Convention, for example, took over five years to enter in to force. Among other efforts, a Special High-Level event on the Minamata Convention will be held at UN Headquarters on 24 September 2014, regional workshops are being organized in different parts of the world to support ratification and early implementation, and a number of enabling activities to directly assist countries with the ratification process are being delivered with the support of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and others, including contributions from organizations such as UNEP, the Secretariat of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions, UNDP, UNIDO, UNITAR, and WHO.

A challenge that the Minamata Convention will face, and which was noted during negotiations, relates to the interplay of the environment and health sectors. The Convention was mandated by the UNEP Governing Council (now the UN Environment Assembly) and participants in the negotiating process were largely from environment ministries (this is also largely true for its sister Conventions of Basel, Stockholm, and Rotterdam). There was a notable effort to engage the health sector (both nationally via consultations with health ministries and internationally by the support provided by the WHO), but the environmental ‘’bias” in the process arguably remains and this may also impact Convention implementation. It raises the question, could future agreements with both environmental and health components somehow benefit from a joint environment (UNEP) and health (WHO) mandate, thus increasing ownership and participation from both sectors?

A second challenge that chemicals policy makers will face in the near future relates to the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM). In parallel to its legally binding cousins, SAICM has both evolved and is facing new challenges. As argued by Leonor Alvarado and Brenda Koekkoek (Guest article #2), SAICM is a unique global initiative aiming to involve all the relevant sectors and stakeholders, and has been touted as the overarching governing mechanism dealing with the complexity of chemical safety issues at the national, regional, and global levels. However, like the Minamata Convention process, SAICM sometimes struggles to fully engage a broader group of stakeholders from beyond the environmental field. And given its broad scope, it is arguably even more important to reach out to those in the agriculture, health, labour, development, and other sectors of key importance to chemicals and waste management, to truly realize the full potential of the multi-sectoral relationships envisioned in the Strategic Approach.

SAICM has been able to draw significant attention to its ‘’emerging policy issues” (or EPIs). While some may argue that not all the issues are truly ‘’emerging” (at least in the sense of being ‘’new”- lead in paint, for example, has been a known problem for decades) or that countries should focus first on the ‘’basics” of chemicals management (e.g. ensuring that a sound regulatory framework is in place), the EPIs process has provided a platform for discussing some issues that are not generally tackled in other international fora in such a manner. Chemicals in products, hazardous substance within the life cycle of electrical and electronic products, and nanotechnology and manufactured nanomaterials are all now receiving attention and action and have engaged a broader range of stakeholders to discuss them than would have probably otherwise been the case if SAICM had not had them on the agenda. However, work still remains to be done. The topic of environmentally persistent pharmaceutical pollutants (EPPPs) was not included as an EPI in 2009 but is proposed once again for ICCM-4 in 2015, although there is no guarantee agreement will be reached to include it and some might question whether SAICM is even the correct venue for addressing pharmaceuticals issues at this stage. As with other parts of the SAICM Global Plan of Action (GPA), there are existing activities that are not yet being addressed by any particular organization or stakeholder. A June 2014 review by the IOMC of the expanded GPA of SAICM, for example, suggests that no SAICM stakeholder is yet active in a number of the various activities proposed for the EPI on nanotechnology, meaning there is thus both a gap and also an opportunity for existing or new entities to engage on these issues.

A third challenge concerns the financing of international chemicals and waste initiatives, especially for the voluntary ones. A welcome development is the expanded GEF window on chemicals, which may also support SAICM. As explained by Ibrahima Sow (Guest article #4), the GEF has moved since the mid-1990s from a small program on persistent toxic substances (PTS) under the international waters ‘’window” to a broader and self-standing chemicals and wastes focal area that for GEF-6 has pledged US$ 554 million. However, as with many other voluntary initiatives, SAICM faces a fairly substantial challenge to continue to find the resources needed to support countries to implement activities and even to finance its own upcoming meetings – as of August 2014, only around 43% of the funds needed to hold its second meeting of the Open-ended Working Group (OEWG) in December 2014 has been mobilized. In terms of resources for country and stakeholder support, SAICM had good success with relatively modest funds in its Quick Start Programme (QSP) Trust Fund: between 2006 to March 2014, the QSP Trust Fund mobilized over $43.5 million (including $36 million in pledges for cash contributions to the trust fund and over $7.7 million in cash and/or in-kind contributions from project implementers and Executing Agencies). However, the QSP is winding down and there is no similar successor arrangement; direct support for SAICM activities will now be lumped together with a more broadly focused ‘’special programme,” which is time-limited and funded by voluntary contributions to support institutional strengthening at the national level for implementation of the four chemicals and wastes Conventions (Basel, Rotterdam, Stockholm and Minamata), as well as SAICM. And of the GEF funds mentioned above, SAICM is only allocated US$13 million of this amount, which is in significant contrast to the Minamata and Stockholm Conventions (US$141 million and 375 million respectively) and its own Trust Fund which mobilized over US$40 million, as noted above. Set within this context, SAICM will face a substantial challenge to continue to retain a portion of the expanding financial pie that exists for chemicals and wastes more generally. This will not make the task of trying to maintain broader sectoral engagement any easier.

Finally, as mentioned in some of the earlier guest articles, it is important to emphasize the role of chemicals and wastes in the broader development context. As Jim Willis noted (Guest article #5), it will be important to ensure that the contributions of the sound management of chemicals and wastes to global development issues – such as poverty eradication, agriculture and food safety, access to clean water, and safe employment – are effectively highlighted and acknowledged in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It is therefore a very positive development that the proposed SDGs include chemicals and wastes in two specific targets – a welcome change to the MDGs where chemicals and waste management were not explicitly mentioned.* While it remains to be seen if these explicit references will be included in the final SDGs to be adopted in 2015, and perhaps in recognition of the importance of chemicals and wastes issues to the post-2015 development agenda and their relative absence from the MDGs, UNEP’s Environment Management Group (EMG) established in early 2014 an inter-agency group on the topic with the aim of providing a coordinated system-wide input to the achievement of the 2020 goal on chemicals and supporting the intergovernmental process to develop the post-2015 agenda. As with the deliberations within the chemicals and wastes regime, broad and concrete multi-sector buy-in will also be key to raising the profile of – and hopefully mobilizing further resources for – this important topic in the broader development agenda.

As Perez aptly observed in the first article of this series, “the dynamic evolution of the international chemicals and waste regime over the last several years is impressive.” It will be key for the regime to remain as dynamic in the future – or perhaps even more so – facing an expanded agenda and greater financial challenges as the 2020 target date approaches.

*The two proposed targets are: “3.9: by 2030 substantially reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air, water, and soil pollution and contamination” and “12.4: by 2020 achieve environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle in accordance with agreed international frameworks and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment” (this latter is essentially just restating the WSSD 2020 goal); see http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/focussdgs.html.

Jonathan Krueger is an independent environment and health consultant (working with WHO and UNEP) and was from 2001-2013 a staff member and manager of UNITAR’s Chemicals and Waste Management Programme. Views expressed are the author’s alone and he thanks those individuals who provided comments on an earlier draft.