The broadest participation ever in a meeting of stakeholders on chemicals management has ended in an agreement to step up efforts to safeguard people and the environment.

The fourth session of the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM4) focused on five issues requiring urgent action – lead in paint, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, chemicals in products, nanotechnology and hazardous substances in the lifecycle of electronics and electrical products.

Delegates at the meeting went further and agreed that environmentally-persistent pharmaceutical pollutants should now be added as an emerging policy issue. After posing a particular risk to children and causing health problems and deaths worldwide, a decision was also taken to ensure that national legislation on the use of highly hazardous pesticides is strengthened and that ecological alternatives are promoted.

Work plan agreed

Seeking out alternatives to toxic chemicals is “a Sisyphean effort,” admitted UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner ahead of the meeting. Of the estimated 100 000 or more chemicals on the market today, the safety of only a fraction has been thoroughly evaluated.

Yet a joint work plan was agreed at ICCM4 which aims to ensure chemicals are used and produced in ways that lead to the minimisation of significant adverse effects on human health and the environment by 2020, in line with the so-called Johannesburg Plan of Implementation and contributing to the new Sustainable Development Goals.

“The time to act is now,” ICCM4 President Dr Richard Lesiyampe, Principal Secretary in the Kenyan Ministry of Environment and Nautral Resources, told journalists following the meeting.

ICCM governs the Strategic Approach to Chemicals Management (SAICM), whose Secretariat is provided by UNEP and whose aim is to bring together a broad range of stakeholders to address chemicals and waste issues not covered by legally-binding treaties. It saw representatives from business, more than 50 civil society organisations and others sit together in Geneva as one during ICCM4.

Some $110 million has been pledged for projects supporting the safe management of chemicals, including funding for 100 developing countries – which as a whole are expected to consume 33% of chemicals produced by 2020. The global plan of action will now involve concrete interventions, application of legal instruments and emerging policy issues addressed.

“Chemicals are a part of our daily lives we cannot do without. That’s precisely why we need to fundamentally rethink how they are developed and managed for industrial and commercial use,” Mr Steiner underlined.

The meeting, held in Geneva from 28 September to 2 October, was attended by over 800 delegates and marked the tenth anniversary of SAICM. It included a high-level segment attended by ministers, Heads of Agencies and Organisations, Chief Executive Officers and Major Groups and Stakeholders from across the private sector.

A preparatory briefing was also organised for Permanent Representations ahead of the conference at the International Environment House on 8 September.

For further details on ICCM4 please contact lisa-maria.hadeed@unep.org and brenda.koekkoek@unep.org