September 2013: A country-led meeting on financing chemical and waste management reached agreement on Terms of Reference (ToR) to support a special programme to strengthen national-level institutions for implementation of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions, the future Minamata Convention and the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM).

The meeting on ‘Integrated Approach to Financing Sound Management of Chemicals and Wastes’ took place from 27-30 August 2013, in Bangkok, Thailand, convened by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

The meeting was called for under UNEP decision 27/12, which requested UNEP’s Executive Director to facilitate and support a country-led meeting to further develop the ToR of the special programme. The meeting was attended by representatives from more than 60 developed and developing countries, international organizations including UNEP, the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the World Bank, international public organizations, and other stakeholders.

The resulting ToR defines institutional strengthening as “enhancing the sustainable institutional capacity of governments to develop, adopt, monitor and enforce policy, legislation and regulation, as well as to gain access to financial and other resources for effective frameworks for the implementation of the instruments for the sound management of chemicals and wastes throughout their life cycle.”

The ToR outlines the special programme’s envisaged outcome, scope, eligibility and governance arrangements, and the mandate of its Executive Board.

The ToR will be presented at: the diplomatic conference of the Minamata Convention on mercury convening in October 2013, in Japan; the UNEP General Assembly in 2014; meetings of the member countries to the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions in 2015; and the 4th International Conference on Chemicals (ICCM 4), scheduled to convene in 2015. [Terms of reference] [Government of Lithuania Press Release]