World confab pledges action to reduce risks from toxic chemicals

AN International Conference on Chemicals Management has agreed on a plan that could prevent the annual deaths of more than one million people exposed to toxic chemicals.

More than 800 participants, including ministers, industry and civil society leaders, have agreed on a strategy to reduce risks from chemicals at a weeklong U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) conference.

Chemicals are an integral part of peoples’ lives. Yet while they are essential and beneficial, they also can be hazardous. Managing those hazards is difficult because little is known about many of them.

UNEP noted that only a fraction of the estimated 100,000 chemicals on the market have been thoroughly evaluated to determine their effects on human health and the environment.

But, enough is known to determine they can be dangerous. UNEP reports the infant death rate from environmental causes is 12 times higher in developing than in developed countries. It says childhood lead exposure contributes to about 600,000 new cases of mental disabilities in children every yea

Specifically, Delegates to the world’s only international forum addressing global and national chemical issues re-committed to take essential actions to fulfill a goal of sound chemicals management by 2020, but allowed the only program funding activities in the most impacted countries to expire. The USD $4 trillion/year chemical industry, which participates in the conference, also failed to offer new funds to pay their fair share for the costs of chemicals management and harm. A very small global levy on the industry of 0.1per cent would yield more than USD$4 billion/year.

A key outcome at ICCM4 was a strategy to tackle the world’s worst pesticides – those that are highly hazardous and linked to a rising incidence of cancer and developmental disorders. The decision at ICCM4 represents the first time that these substances will be addressed in a comprehensive way in a UN agreement.

ICCM4 agreed to take action on some critical toxic chemical issues,” said Olga Speranskaya, Co-chair of IPEN. “However, a five-year funding gap will make it extremely difficult to implement them. This makes the need for funding urgent. Governments, financial institutions, intergovernmental organizations and the chemical industry must each pay their fair share,” she added.
Current issues addressed critically during the conference include highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs), information about chemicals in products (CiPs), eliminating lead paint, nanotechnology, pharmaceutical pollutants, and endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs).

A key outcome at ICCM4 was a strategy to tackle the world’s worst pesticides – those that are highly hazardous and linked to a rising incidence of cancer and developmental disorders. The decision at ICCM4 represents the first time that these substances will be addressed in a comprehensive way in a UN agreement. Delegates took a major step towards sustainable agriculture by emphasizing a more holistic agroecology approach. “In Ethiopia, highly hazardous pesticides poison farmers and pollute the land,” said Tadesse Amera, Pesticide Action Nexus. “Now we need to get to work on the new strategy so that instead of poisoning ourselves with pesticides, we grow food in a way that respects human health, our land, and our water.

The Executive Director of SRADev Nigeria, Leslie Adogame,  who represented Nigerian NGOs (a participating member of IPEN), said: “For us in Nigeria (perhaps Africans), we are happy we got relatively most of all we wanted in the deal and pleased with the outcomes of this political conference (despite the poor funding commitment) because the delegates adopted among others concrete risk reduction activities hazardous pesticides use, elimination of lead in paints, (as you know lead is continuously added to Nigerian paints), and chemicals added to products, which if implemented, will result in the reduction of toxic exposure on human health and the environment,” said Adogame.

IPEN is an international network of more than 700 organizations that fight toxic chemicals and works with people who suffer from contamination from farm pesticides, mercury hotspots, lead poisoning and other toxic products.
“We now return home to push our government towards fulfilling this obligations and its recent statement of commitments to sustainable development goals (SDGs) beyond leap service”. Prejudicial funding and national budgeting for the chemical sector is key to mainstreaming of chemical management into national developmental agenda.” he added.