Another step toward global chemicals management
If you’ve ever been hillwalking you’ll know this ambivalent feeling: the satisfaction of reaching your first summit of the day, with the apprehension of the looming reality of your next, higher peak.
In March, at the 5th UN Environment Assembly meeting in Nairobi ("UNEA5"), the national representatives and interested parties around the world, including the RSC, celebrated achieving the first ‘summit’ in their multi-year campaign for better global chemicals management: the UNEA5 members adopted a resolution supporting "the establishment of a comprehensive and ambitious science policy panel on the sound management of chemicals and waste and preventing pollution." Proposed by Switzerland and co-sponsored by the UK and other nations, the resolution is an important milestone on the path to protecting our environment and global human health, with science at the heart of the solution.
It was one of fourteen resolutions adopted at UNEA5, which covered a range of environmental topics like nitrogen management, animal welfare, circular economy and a well-publicised resolution “to end plastic pollution: towards an international legally binding instrument”. Many of these will one day have significant impacts on the work of chemists worldwide – and also present to the chemical science community enormous opportunities for innovation and influence, to make the world a better place.
Our declaration to the UN
For many years we and others have been discussing the need for a new science policy instrument for chemicals management. "Climate change and biodiversity loss are rightly identified as two of the planet’s greatest challenges. But solving them is entirely dependent on fixing chemical pollution," wrote our president Tom Welton in the January 2021 issue of Voice. "It’s like a stool with two legs: it’s never going to work without extra, equal support. The third leg is international chemicals management." And so alongside the recognised and respected Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), we established a call for a new panel.
Our Declaration to the UN sets out clearly what’s at stake: our environment and millions of lives cut short because of pollution. The solutions will be complex, requiring enormous societal and technological advances, and must be based on the highest quality scientific advice. Dozens of other organisations – government departments, arms-length bodies, universities, scientific societies and many more – have added their names to our declaration, showing the breadth and strength of support for this goal.
Our Declaration to the UN: a New Global Science Panel for Chemical Pollution
Chemical pollution is an urgent, critical issue for humanity, on equal footing with biodiversity loss and climate change.
According to the Lancet Commission, poor chemicals management kills millions of people every year; far more than malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS-related diseases, and disproportionately affecting poor and vulnerable people. Chemicals bring so many benefits to our lives and we cannot live without them. However, the known adverse effects of pollution are just the tip of the iceberg: the world is sleepwalking into a massive contamination problem with many thousands of unmonitored chemicals being released into water supplies, food chains and the air we breathe.
Poor chemicals management and ineffective waste treatment is taking a terrible toll on human health and the environment. It is a global problem but there is no truly effective independent global scientific advice mechanism into policymaking enabling coordination of efforts to mitigate and eliminate the harmful effects – both known and yet to be discovered – of poorly managed chemicals, waste and pollution.
This must change.
Together, we urge the United Nations in 2022 to take this decisive step, supported by governments, industries, and chemical science organisations around the world, and we agree to the statement: The world needs an independent Intergovernmental science-policy Platform for Chemicals and Waste Management, with similar status to IPCC and IPBES, to enable science-informed, multidisciplinary, global coordination and action on chemicals pollution, protecting our planet and saving millions of lives.
The Burlington Consensus
Our role as a trusted convenor around chemistry issues, together with our unrivalled access to experts in our membership and wider community, meant we could bring a wide range of stakeholders together to agree a common way forward.
Ellie Bates, chemicals lead at the UK government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), said previously that "speaking honestly, when we first began to think about this issue, we were not actually convinced that we needed to create a new body to serve as a science-policy interface for chemicals and waste. But when we discussed it further with our colleagues at the RSC, we became convinced that the current patchwork is not sufficient."
To further demonstrate the strength of feeling across science and policy, following engagement with key experts in our membership, we worked with Defra to organise an international hybrid panel discussion on the issue, titled “The Burlington Consensus”, with most panellists taking part from Burlington House in London and about 100 international delegates online. With influential representatives from government, academia, industry and global learned societies and associations, we discussed in detail the possibilities and pitfalls of different options.
The global nature of the issue – and the disparities across nations – was an important theme. Catherine Ngila, executive director of the Academy of African Sciences raised the important questions about our gaps in knowledge when it comes to the scale of the problem. Vicki Gardiner, President of Commonwealth Chemistry, hoped that we could learn more through this network and link to scientists and policymakers in both developed and developing world countries to gather more evidence.
Support for a new panel was unanimous: the former chair of IPCC and IPBES, Sir Bob Watson, said that "there’s no question in my opinion that an IPCC/IPBES-type assessment can strengthen the science policy interface, and I think those assessments can actually be easily adapted to the issue of chemicals waste and pollution."
And in his closing remarks panellist Richard Daniels, director of the UK Health and Safety Executive Chemicals Regulation Division, said, "I haven’t heard anyone, from what they’ve said or the questions, saying this is not a good thing to do or what should be supported, it’s almost moving on: about how do we make it work then?"
Visit our webpage to watch the whole event, and find out how to support our initiative.
UNEA5 and beyond
Bolstered by widespread support, delegates from countries around the world discussed at UNEA5 the need for a new panel. As part of their contribution on behalf of the UK, Defra delegates played our summary video of the Burlington Consensus event.
This is a landmark moment and just the beginning of a process, says Camilla Alexander-White, the RSC’s chemicals policy lead. "The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) is expected to take forward a programme to design what a new science-policy panel might look like, its remit and – crucially – its required funding.
"With the UK’s Lord Goldsmith elected as Vice President of UNEA for Western European states, it is essential that the UK government follows the example of the Swiss – who have already promised £600,000 – and commits to appropriate long-term funding for these important global initiatives. If the structure and funding is there, scientists are ready and waiting to participate."
We’ve had a long hike and we’ve reached our first peak. Let’s enjoy the view and a quick cuppa – then prepare for the next part of our journey.