Fwd: [ipenlistserve] What Happened at SAICM OEWG?
yuyun ismawati
From: Joe DiGangi <j...@ipen.org>
Date: Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 10:17 AM
Subject: [ipenlistserve] What Happened at SAICM OEWG?
To: ipenn...@npogroups.org
Dear Colleagues,
From 15 – 18 November, more than 100 countries, chemical industry representatives, and public interest NGOs gathered in Belgrade, Serbia for the SAICM Open Ended Working Group meeting (OEWG). The IPEN delegation at INC3 included 26 participants from 17 countries.
The purpose of the OEWG was to prepare for the 3rd International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM3) which is scheduled for September 2012 in Nairobi. The mandate for the OEWG included the following:
· Review and prioritize emerging issues for ICCM
· Continue discussion on emerging issues
· Discuss progress and gaps
· Report outcomes of regional meetings
· Highlight priority issues for ICCM agenda
· Prepare draft decisions and resolutions
Below are relevant links and a brief report on what happened at INC3. Thanks to all the colleagues who helped fill in the details. Colleagues who participated in the meeting are welcome to provide further insights and reactions.
Best regards,
Joe D.
Links
IPEN Views of OEWG
http://www.ipen.org/ipenweb/saicm/oewg2011.html
SAICM OEWG page
http://www.saicm.org/index.php?content=meeting&mid=124&menuid=&def=1
News from the Regions
The OEWG permitted full participation of NGOs in the African, Asia-Pacific, CEE, and GRULAC regional meetings. Western Europe and Others Group (WEOG) never met. EU and JUSCANNZ meetings were closed to NGOs.
Colleagues from the Asia-Pacific region noted that only half of the Asia-Pacific countries attended the conference. Some government participants were new to the process and some others were the persons in charge. The only common position of the region was still a good one: eliminating lead in paint. The Asia-Pacific region introduced a conference room paper at the meeting which calls on all stakeholders to “…undertake initiatives to phase out the manufacture and sale of paints to which lead pigments and other lead compounds have been added…” Due to a big gap within the region on other emerging issues such as nanotechnology and electronics, discussion on these items will be discussed further at ICCM3.
Colleagues from the Central and Eastern European region (CEE) noticed substantial changes in the overall tune of the discussions. It was obvious that countries want to be considered as the CEE region and do not want to be divided into the EU member states and non-EU countries. However, the situation is difficult since the EU countries “cannot have an opinion” unless the European Commission “has an opinion”. This has paralyzed the region and in effect made the EU the gatekeeper for regional positions, something that non-EU countries recognize as unfair. A group of EECCA countries prepared an intervention on Rio+20 expectations only to avoid long process of approval to make it a CEE regional intervention. Russia made the intervention which really came out as a historic statement on the need to address harms from contaminated sites and support for the polluter pays principle.
Financial and technical resources
IPEN Goals: Note the need for secretariat resources and push for options on long-term financing as an outcome of a finances working group. Also get OEWG to recommend that financial commitments to the QSP are permitted at least until November 2013 and that disbursement continue until portfolio activities are completed
What happened at the meeting?
>A huge fight over this topic held up progress on all other issues; final results included a co-chair’s summary of long-term financing options as starting point for discussions at ICCM3; resolution passed allowing contributions to the QSP until 2013 and distribution until projects completed
Lead in paint
IPEN goals: OEWG should recommend adoption of the draft resolution on lead in paint by ICCM3 including a request for more government involvement, financial resources, and an invitation to report on further results at ICCM4
What happened at the meeting?
>Moving ahead to ICCM3 with overwhelming support for further action
Chemicals in products
IPEN goals: An international framework should be developed and elements should be broadened to facilitate consumer awareness[1] along with guidelines for recycling and disposal and extended producer responsibility. Work should include a broad international consumer campaign to increase understanding and create a driving force for safer products
What happened at the meeting?
>Moving ahead to ICCM3 with agreement that further work is needed
A discussion regarding the definition of the CiP framework took place. The reason for that was to avoid any possible links to a legally binding nature of the suggested instrument. There were several proposals such as code of conduct (EU suggestions), guidance (Sweden), guiding principles (IPEN) and finally CiP program. The US Council for International Business was trying to include “non-legally binding CiP program” into the recommendations which sounded ridiculous and was rejected. At the plenary IPEN made an intervention suggesting that the scope of the information systems on chemicals in products should be broadened to facilitate consumer and recyclers’ awareness and understanding of the issue of chemicals in products along with the development of guidelines for recycling and disposal and extended producer responsibility. We believe that the goal of the CiP process is to develop a collaborative framework that would facilitate the development of information systems on chemicals in products which will make information wildly available to all stakeholders including to consumers and recyclers as key stakeholders receiving the information. It was suggested that the CiP will proceed with the Steering group as it is now and a technical group will also be established after the ICCM3 to continue working on the CiP program and the pilot project. After brief conversation with the Secretariat I noticed that they were in favor of having a case study in toy sector. So we could try to push this forward.
Electronics
IPEN goals: OEWG should support the addition of a new work area and associated activities to the Global Plan of Action (GPA). The recommendations and key messages from the Vienna workshop should be adopted by ICCM3.
What happened at the meeting?
>Moving forward to ICCM3 along with the recommendations on all parts of the lifecycle from the special workshop in Vienna; further work needed to obtain a champion(s) and define areas of further work
The EU supported by the USA, Canada and Nigeria supported the inclusion of hazardous substances in electrical and electronic products into the GPA but asked the Secretariate to make further assessment before ICCM3 for integration consideration into the GPA and provide recommendations for ICCM3. IPEN reminded the participants that the resolution of ICCM2 Decision II/D4 mandated the OEWG to present the result in the ICCM3, adopting the Vienna resolution and maintaining further works among the participants to be included in the omnibus resolution.
Several delegations brought up the Basel Convention insisting that work not be duplicated (US, Canada, IT Industry, China etc). The industry strongly push to get recognition of their voluntary initiatives related to material disclosure, code of conduct, best practices and information sharing. Egypt reminded that most of the issues has been discussed in the Vienna workshop need to be recognised and adopted. The importance of green design and the elimination of hazardous substances and control the production need to be highlited.
Professor Osibanjo was the facilitator for the small group meeting. He and a representative of the Basel Convention Secretariat clearly indicated that the Basel Convention did not address the full cycle of chemicals in the life cycle of electrical and electronic products (upper, middle and downstream issues). Therefore having these issues in SAICM will have a synergy between these conventions. With this clarification, the discussion started but there was a resistance from the representatives of the electronics industry and some reluctant comments from US and EU representatives.
The OEWG did move ahead on one important midstream issue concerning worker exposure. Exposure standards in the workplace are often thousands of times LESS protective than standards in the community. For example, workplace standards are often expressed in parts per million, whereas community standards are in parts per billion. A major accomplishment at the OEWG is that the crucial issue for protecting workers health - adhering to health-based exposure standards for workplace toxics-- was approved with no objections. The implication is that manufacturers should move toward engineering controls or substitute less toxic materials. This provides an incentive for green design and impacts the waste stream too.
What was exceptional from other emerging issues was that other issues have had a leading organization or country, but for electronics there is no champion institution. The group recommended some possibilities such as ILO, UNEP, WHO and others. IPEN condensed the draft resolution from six pages to one page which created a favorable condition for discussion. Finally, it was agreed to include this in the next ICCM3 meeting agenda, but electronics still needs our efforts including identifying concrete activities for further work (inventory and impact assessment studies) and identifying a champion organization to take it forward.
Nanotechnology and nanomaterials
IPEN goals: OEWG should support the addition of a new work area and associated activities to the Global Plan of Action. Intersessional activities should include development of life cycle approaches, product and material registers, awareness raising and capacity building, and integrated measures to address any worker health and safety concerns
What happened at the meeting?
>Moving forward to ICCM3; support for including nano in the GPA and a resolution and agreement to continue work
The OEWG engaged in two discussions on this topic: 1) the
Swiss proposal to add specific nano activities to the Global Plan of Action and
2) to consider a further mandate for SAICM to address this question.
The latter discussion led to OEWG suggesting ICCM3 to adopt a resolution on
nano. This resolution, further to calling for enhanced information gathering
and sharing, includes recommendations for the development of international
technical and regulatory guidance and training materials for the sound
management of manufactured nanomaterials. All in all, it can provide an
acceptable mandate for the post ICCM3 nano work (especially considering that
there were only few friendly countries in the room discussing it, more below).
The discussion on the Swiss proposal to include specific nano activities in the
GPA was interrupted for lack of time, and consisted of a basic screening of the
Swiss proposal. General agreement of principle was reached on 9 non-contentious
proposed activities (although they still require some word smithing that could
prove more contentious than anticipated). More ambitious (and strongly
relevant) activities such as the implementation of extended producer
responsibility, labeling schemes and registers of nanomaterials, involvement of
the health sector or the development of regulatory measures for the sound
management of waste containing nanomaterials were strongly opposed by at least
one participant (mostly Canada, very vocal and quite aggressive, US, Australia
and/or ICCA). Also, Canada made its point again about the impossibility to
discuss the actor, time line and/or indicators of progress columns of the
proposal (using the same argument as during ICCM1 and prep com’s: SAICM
is a voluntary agreement, it cannot prescribe timeline, indicators or actors).
Much work remains to be done between now and ICCM3 to develop a thorough list
of activities that would help countries to adequately tackle the safe
production, use, and disposal of nanomaterials.
Finally, one of the main features (and disappointments) of the nano discussion
was how there has been literally NO input or participation nor even apparent
interest in any way from any developing country in the
nano-conversation…despite the awareness-raising workshops organized since
ICCM2. Off course a lot of the participants in the regional workshops were not
present in Belgrade. However, if we hope to achieve something a little more
ambitious at ICCM3, we will NEED to get at least some countries involved. That
calls for us to think of a revised strategy to increase the potential awareness
and involvement of developing country governments (not sure that can be done by
ICCM3 though. We’ll discuss that soon in a conf call). Conversely, EU has
been most helpful in the discussions, in particular on the resolution.
Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDC)
IPEN goals: OEWG should recommend EDC for the agenda of ICCM3 as an emerging policy issue.
What happened at the meeting?
>Moving forward to ICCM3 but just barely… after a prolonged attack by China to kill the issue. Most delegations supported the issue. ICCM3 could decide to: (a) undertake action on EDCs as an emerging issue, deciding on which “cooperative actions” are needed, in consideration of reports expected in 2012; (b) begin to implement Work Areas under the Global Plan of Action (GPA) that are relevant to EDCs (e.g. 54, 55, 87 and 130); (c) create activities that are not bound to a title such as the GPA or emerging policy issue as done with perfluorinated compounds at ICCM2; or (d) take no action with respect to EDCs under SAICM.
During a technical briefing on EDCs before the conference, speakers underlined the inability of traditional toxicological methods to screen chemicals for endocrine disrupting properties, the challenge of mixtures, and the degree of scientific specialization in endocrinology required to identify actual and potential EDCs. Particularly persuasive was Professor Tom Zoeller’s statement that the U.S. EPA’s endocrine disruptor screening program would miss PCBs and that his specialization in thyroid hormones to not provide sufficient expertise in other endocrine systems, such as reproductive endocrinology. OECD and WHO also presented their ongoing work on EDCs
There was support among country participants regarding IPEN's proposed cooperative actions on EDCs, but suggestions were not discussed in detail in plenary or the contact group due to time constraints. The small group contained Canada, China, EU (Denmark as lead on EDCs), Australia, US Council for International Business, ICCA, Norway, Austria as chair and US. UNEP was represented by David Piper and Agneta Sunden. Neither WHO nor OECD were present. No developing or transition countries were present except China. The EU was very much in favor of approving EDCs as emerging issue. China was totally against it due to a disagreement internally between Ministry of Health (against) and Ministry of Environment (some flexibility for…) This shows that on chemical issues related to health, we need to take the Ministry of Health into account, too. Industry had no problems with this emerging issue, but wanted a narrow scope. But as they said, they have no best practices to show, yet :-)
After some negotiation, the issue of whether EDCs would move forward was brought to the plenary Friday evening, under the impression that China had agreed to a resolution that would send the issue of EDCs to ICCM3. All in the space of a few minutes, China went back and forth between agreeing to send the issue to ICCM3, while also insisting that the criteria proposed emerging policy issues were irrelevant because they were “too broad” (they did not state that the criteria were not met). Iran expressed initial support for China in maintaining brackets around the part of the resolution stating that participants agreed the criteria had been met for EDCs as a new policy issue. Norway then suggested removing the brackets around the sentence that would send the issue to ICCM3, but maintaining brackets around agreement on consensus, which became the final outcome
Environmentally persistent pharmaceutical pollutants (EPPP)
IPEN goals: OEWG should recommend EPPP for the agenda of ICCM3 as an emerging policy issue.
What happened at the meeting?
Note that I did not receive any information on this topic from ISDE, the proposer of the issue…
>No agreement on moving EPPP forward; encouraged proponent to further development the proposal and continue discussion after ICCM3; attacked principally by US (incorrectly claiming it was outside SAICM scope), chemical industry (claiming topic already taken care of elsewhere and outside SAICM scope), Canada (not a problem); WHO noted that their drinking water study showed no problem
The EPPP technical meeting was attended by EU and CEE countries and no developing country representative was present. Three IPENers participated: Lilian Corra, Olga Speranskaya, and Gohar Khojayan. The general feeling was that all agreed this is an emerging issue that should be brought to the ICCM3. However, the participants were not very comfortable with the name and hence the definition of EPPP. There were no countries that actually suggested working together with ISDE to improve the scope of the nomination. Some raised the question about the persistent nature and said that it would be better to say chronic exposure. Most probably the name will be changed (e.g. pharmaceutical environmental pollutants, PEP) to reflect this concern. There was also the feeling that despite efforts taken to explain the issue to the participants; at the technical briefings on 14/11, thru the IPEN position paper, thru the interaction of IPENers, after explanations of WHO before and at the OEWG etc., the area still remained somewhat vague. Finally the participants to the technical meeting left the room with little to offer to the plenary. Another note re EPPP: the CEE Regional Meeting participants voiced strong support for both EPPP and EDCs as emerging issues. As a result, Albania made a statement in plenary (on 18/11) on behalf of the region. So, in our future work on finding support for lobbying the EPPP (or whatever the name will be) is clearly the CEE region as well as the EU and the UN agencies such as WHO and UNEP.
Health sector strategy
IPEN goals: Case studies should be developed to illustrate how the health sector can contribute to SACIM implementation. Specific targets and indicators of progress for the engagement of the health sector should be established
What happened at the meeting?
> Moving forward to ICCM3
The CEE region was very active while discussing SAICM health strategy and the case studies. The case study we suggested triggered interesting discussions and many countries wanted to be part of the practical case study and desk study. Macedonia and Albania shared their experience of implementing similar projects and obstacles they faced while collecting data. Just to remind you the case study which linked health surveillance and environmental and bio-monitoring activities was finally proposed as IPEN/HEAL case study but was also approved by the CEE region as a whole.
Rio + 20
IPEN goals: Rio + 20 should take stock of progress and reinvigorate the goals of Chapter 19 of Agenda 21 and the WSSD. A key issue at Rio +20 should be calling for implementation of the polluter pays principle and getting the industry to pay their fair share.
What happened at the meeting?
The discussion included the need for renewed political commitment to the meet the 2020 goal and the relevance of chemical safety to the green economy and poverty eradication. As mentioned above, Russia gave a remarkable intervention on behalf of Armenia, Moldova, Ukraine, and Russia noting the need for action on contaminated sites and emphasizing the importance of the polluter pays principle. IPEN intervened emphasizing the importance of applying the polluter pays principle by having the industry pay for management of its substances. Finally, the Nigerian Basel Convention Resource Center reminded delegates that “...the environment is not a gift from our parents... but a loan from our children.”
[1] These might include: a publicly available database of aggregated information on chemicals in products, collated list of recalled products, and technical requirements for new information exchange methods including best policy practices and best technical practices, and a living list of chemicals of concern and their health and environmental effects.
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