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Brand-new international guidelines have been set to chart approaches for making, transporting, using, and disposing chemicals in ways that protect people's health and the environment. Negotiators completed this plan, known as the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM), earlier this month in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (C&EN, Feb. 13, page 12).
The strategy is designed to help the nations of the world implement, by 2020, a comprehensive approach for managing chemicals. In addition to this noble goal, the accord may also play into future trade disputes, including possible challenges to the European Union's new legislation for regulating chemicals.
The core of the Dubai plan is a menu of more than 250 actions for use by governments, industry, unions, environmental and community activists, and researchers. Recommendations include developing better methods to determine the impact of chemicals on human health, eliminating child labor that involves hazardous substances, and encouraging cleaner production and prevention of pollution.
According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the strategy comes as global chemical production is expected to climb by as much as 80% in the next 15 years. Companies produce some 70,000 to 100,000 commercial substances, and an estimated 1,500 new compounds enter the market each year, UNEP said. And according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development, production of high-volume chemicals is shifting from industrialized nations with strong regulatory systems, such as the U.S., to developing countries like Brazil and India.
The agreement is unusual among global pacts affecting chemicals, including treaties designed to protect the ozone layer and one banning persistent organic pollutants (POPs). First, the Dubai deal is voluntary. It amounts to an internationally agreed-upon guidebook that is aimed primarily at developing countries that lack a regulatory system for chemicals.
Second, unlike other chemical treaties, SAICM does not cover specific compounds, such as those that deplete stratospheric ozone, but encompasses virtually all substances in commerce. "It has been clear for some time that simply ticking off groups of chemicals one by one was becoming impractical," said Klaus T??pfer, executive director of UNEP. "A new approach, a new way forward for chemicals management was needed, which is what SAICM now offers."
Finally, the main negotiators of the Dubai accord were governments, but representatives from industry, unions, and environmental groups had an active say in the talks.
Those involved in the three years of negotiations on the deal are pleased and relieved that SAICM is a reality after the days and nights of talks in Dubai on Feb. 4-6. For instance, the International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN), a coalition of more than 400 environmental groups from around the world, called the accord "a critical global framework to eliminate the harms caused by chemicals." But as might be expected, IPEN, industry, and others are not totally satisfied with the compromises that were made.
In addition, although SAICM is focused on the safe management of chemicals, it also may play a role that was not discussed overtly in the negotiations: The pact could have an effect on future international trade disputes.
For example, some governments have drastically different interpretations of how the pact addresses the concept of precaution. This may seem like a squabble over semantics, but interpretation of precaution is a hot-button issue in trade disputes, including the U.S. challenges to the EU's bans on hormones in beef and on genetically modified foods. Precaution also may become the cornerstone of a complaint to the World Trade Organization that challenges the EU's forthcoming legislation on the Registration, Evaluation & Authorization of Chemicals (REACH).
In 2000, the EU officially embraced the "precautionary principle," which is the idea of controlling substances on the basis of credible but incomplete information even though the risk is not completely understood or proven scientifically (C&EN, April 22, 2002, page 24). Opponents see the precautionary principle as the antithesis of chemical regulation based on scientifically demonstrated risk.
SAICM calls on those who manage chemicals to apply the "precautionary approach," as described in a document that emerged from the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. That document, called the Rio Declaration, says, "Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation."
The U.S. and several other countries, including Japan and Canada, as well as the chemical industry, see the demands of the precautionary approach as being considerably less stringent than those of the precautionary principle. They negotiated hard to ensure that SAICM did not include direct references to the precautionary principle and only reaffirmed the language from the Earth Summit.
"The precautionary principle did not creep into the final SAICM," said Isi A. Siddiqui, vice president of science and regulatory affairs for CropLife America, a pesticide industry group.
But EU representatives see things differently. In SAICM, "there is a clear commitment to the precautionary principle," said Josef Pröll, Austria's agriculture minister and head of the EU's delegation in Dubai. "We don't need to see a tragedy happen to put safety systems in place."
How these differences will eventually play out remains to be seen.
Another trade-related issue raised in Dubai was whether a country whose chemical regulations are challenged as an unfair barrier to imports under WTO rules can claim implementation of SAICM as part of its defense. Ernest S. Rosenberg, president of the Soap & Detergent Association, explained, "Due to an arcane twist in international law, it may be possible to use a nonbinding agreement to help interpret treaties," including trade deals. This approach, Rosenberg said, could become a possible challenge to REACH at WTO.
During the negotiations in Dubai, Claudia A. McMurray, deputy assistant secretary for environment at the State Department, called for SAICM to state clearly that the voluntary chemicals management deal would neither affect the interpretation or application of any binding agreement nor affect any country's rights under such pacts. McMurray and other U.S. delegates, however, did not mention trade concerns or REACH.
The EU countered with proposed wording that the U.S. found unacceptable. Negotiators eventually compromised in the waning hours of the talks by omitting any such language in the accord without ever publicly raising the potential impact on trade disputes.
After the Dubai talks concluded, however, the EU addressed the issue directly in a statement: "The U.S., mindful of ongoing trade disputes with the EU, tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent SAICM from becoming a relevant source of guidance in interpreting legally binding agreements."
Other positions taken by the Bush Administration also caused major headaches for negotiators in Dubai. For instance, the U.S. delegation worked diligently to delete any reference to the World Bank and other international financial institutions in SAICM, saying that such mention could distract these organizations from their efforts to reduce global poverty. The World Bank released a report in Dubai on Feb. 5 describing how sound chemicals management is an important component of both reduction of poverty and development. Eventually, negotiators eliminated most, but not all, references to international financial institutions.
The Bush Administration also pushed strongly to exempt all pharmaceuticals and food additives from SAICM. Under a compromise, the agreement will not apply to these products if their health and environmental hazards are regulated by a national food or pharmaceutical agency, such as the Food & Drug Administration.
In large part because of the unwillingness of the U.S. to compromise until the final hour of the negotiations, the Dubai talks teetered close to the brink of failure. Environmental groups scratched their heads at the tough U.S. stances that nearly derailed the globally popular and strictly voluntary chemicals management agenda. "U.S. attempts to disrupt SAICM are particularly brazen, since the greatest beneficiaries of better chemicals management are developing countries struggling to protect the health of workers, communities, and consumers in an age of global commerce," said Jack Weinberg, cochair of IPEN.
Garrity Baker, senior director of global affairs for the American Chemistry Council, had a different take. "We understand that negotiations of this magnitude are extremely difficult," he said, adding that the U.S. chemical manufacturers' trade group was "very pleased with the outcome" in Dubai.
Now that the negotiations are done, the challenge in coming months and years will be turning SAICM from words on paper into activities that lead to safer management of chemicals.
That endeavor will require money. Developing countries need financial assistance to turn SAICM into reality, and delegates from these nations repeatedly asked industrialized countries to pledge money for these efforts.
Governments agreed to an EU proposal for international financing to kick-start SAICM. This Quick Start Program will mobilize seed money so developing countries can at least start chemicals management efforts. In Dubai, several European countries, including Switzerland, pledged about $10 million for this fund. Switzerland is not an EU country; it has been a major financer of chemicals management efforts.
"It's a drop in the bucket," said Glenn Wiser, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law. Plus, long-term financing is needed to meet SAICM's goal of having a worldwide chemicals management strategy in place by 2020, he added.
Governments are not likely to return to the long-term finance question until they meet again on SAICM in 2009.
Governments aren't the only entities involved in putting the global chemicals management plan into place. Industry will be a major player. The International Council of Chemical Associations is expanding its Responsible Care program as its contribution to SAICM, said Peter Elverding, president of the board of ICCA. Elverding is also president of the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC) and chief executive officer of the Dutch firm DSM.
"It is clear that SAICM can only achieve its goal by building a new partnership approach, with joint activities among producers, downstream users, governments, and other stakeholders, based on a strongly felt shared responsibility," Elverding said.
Though some see SAICM as too weak and lacking the financial backing needed to help developing countries implement it successfully, UNEP's Töpfer is pragmatic and hopeful about the future of the accord. "We have our first step. We have a foundation upon which we can build."
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