Key Points
- A new global treaty, the Stockholm Convention, aims to eliminate a class of chemicals that the international community has agreed is extremely dangerous to human health and the environment.
- A complementary treaty, the Rotterdam Convention, offers important controls on the international trade of highly toxic chemicals.
- A broad international network of civil society organizations is calling for 50 nations to ratify both treaties by late 2002.
The international community has, at long last, recognized that there are some toxic chemicals that are just too dangerous to produce, use, and store—put simply, too dangerous to have on the planet. The global treaty resulting from this recognition is an important and welcome international policy milestone that is long-overdue.
The chemicals in question are persistent organic pollutants—“POPs”—substances that are toxic, persist in the environment, accumulate in the body fat of humans and animals, concentrate up the food chain, and can be transported across the globe. At very low levels of exposure, POPs can cause reproductive and developmental disorders, damage to the immune and nervous systems, and a range of cancers. Exposure during key phases of fetal development can be particularly damaging.
Infants around the world are born with an array of POPs already in their blood. Many POPs pervade the environment, even in remote regions such as the Arctic and Antarctic; several have been found at high levels in the blood and breast milk of Inuit women living thousands of miles from the nearest possible source of pollution. POPs are found in today’s U.S. food supply, even though many of the chemicals in question have been banned in the U.S. for decades.
The global nature of these pollutants led the UN Environment Program (UNEP) to sponsor several years of negotiations that recently culminated in an international treaty. The treaty, now known as the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, was signed into formal legal existence in Sweden on May 23, 2001 by 91 countries and the European Community.
The treaty identifies an initial list of 12 POPs slated for elimination. Nine of the 12 (aldrin, endrin, dieldrin, chlordane, DDT, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex, and toxaphene) are pesticides, all of which have been targeted for elimination by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) around the world since the early 1980s as part of Pesticide Action Network (PAN) International’s Dirty Dozen campaign. The other chemicals on the convention’s initial list are PCBs, dioxins, and furans. PCBs and all of the nine listed pesticides have been banned in the U.S., some—like DDT—for decades. The U.S. continues to produce dioxins and furans, however, as byproducts of chlorine-based industries and waste incineration.
The Stockholm Convention establishes various timetables for elimination of the intentionally produced POPs, which include all the listed pesticides and PCBs. Provisions specific to DDT call for its ultimate elimination but allow interim use of the pesticide for vector control and call for aggressive efforts to develop and implement safe and effective alternatives to combat malaria. The byproduct POPs are also slated for ultimate elimination, with an emphasis on alternative, cleaner production processes rather than end-of-the-pipe controls.
The Rotterdam Convention is a complementary treaty providing important controls on international trade of highly toxic chemicals. This convention, signed by 73 nations in 1998, is the formalization of a voluntary Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure, administered jointly by UNEP and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) since 1989. The PIC procedure requires that any country importing pesticides and certain other hazardous chemicals must be informed of bans or severe restrictions on that chemical in other countries.
The volume of hazardous pesticides crossing international borders is
tremendous—an estimated 2.4 billion pounds per year in 1990. Developing
countries often lack the capacity to adequately evaluate and regulate
highly toxic chemicals imported from their Northern neighbors. The PIC
procedure is the international community’s response to this inequity,
and it continues to be implemented on a voluntary basis, while the treaty
accumulates the needed 50 ratifications to come into force. Although the
convention could be strengthened, it represents an important tool for
the international community to monitor and control the world’s massive
trade in dangerous substances.
Many NGOs, including PAN International and the International POPs Elimination
Network (IPEN), are calling for 50 countries to ratify these important
conventions by September 2002, when the World Summit on Sustainable Development
(Rio +10) takes place in Johannesburg, South Africa. To date, Canada and
Fiji have ratified the Stockholm Convention, and 14 countries have ratified
the Rotterdam Convention. The U.S. has not yet ratified either.
Problems with Current U.S. Policy
Key Problems
- The U.S. has a history of slow ratification of international agreements.
- In Stockholm, the U.S. blocked the establishment of a scientific review
committee, designed to begin reviewing additional chemicals to be eliminated
under the Stockholm Convention.
- U.S. policies do not adequately reflect the precautionary principle,
an approach to chemical policies prevalent in Europe and substantially
more protective of human health and the environment than U.S. procedures.
President Bush announced just prior to Earth Day 2001 that he intended
to sign the POPs treaty in Stockholm and move quickly toward ratification.
He pointed toward the bipartisan nature of this commitment, as it was
finalizing a process overseen by his Democratic predecessor. Many U.S.
NGOs welcomed the Bush administration’s commitment to the treaty,
and they are now challenging the State Department and the Senate to follow
through with ratification of the Stockholm Convention and the companion
Rotterdam Convention before the end of 2001.
This rapid schedule of ratification is both justifiable and unprecedented.
International treaties have been known to languish for many years in the
U.S. Senate and/or State Department—or somewhere in the policy netherland
between. Yet, in the case of the Stockholm Convention, the treaty has
widespread support from the NGO community, industry, and governments around
the world, and it regulates a set of chemicals that have been known for
decades to be extremely dangerous.
Positions taken by the U.S. during treaty negotiations make rapid ratification
even more urgent. In Stockholm, the U.S. successfully blocked a European
proposal that would have initiated an interim process of reviewing new
chemicals proposed for addition under the convention instead of waiting
for ratification. The European plan would have established an international
scientific review committee immediately, and the committee would then
have made recommendations to the Conference of the Parties once the treaty
comes into force. This model parallels the Interim Chemical Review Committee
established upon signature of the Rotterdam Convention in 1998. The absence
of such an interim process could delay for years the addition of new chemicals
under the Stockholm Convention, and this makes the treaty’s ratification
all the more urgent.
Some of the chemicals likely to be considered for addition, such as the
pesticides lindane and endosulfan, are still in widespread use in both
industrialized and developing nations despite clear evidence of toxicity,
persistence, and bioaccumulation. Elimination of these additional chemicals
is likely to be much more controversial in the U.S. than an agreement
to eliminate chemicals that have already been banned domestically for
decades.
In the Rose Garden statement announcing his intent to sign and ratify
the POPs treaty, President Bush noted that “these chemicals respect
no boundaries and can harm Americans even when released abroad.”
This statement, while true, does not reflect the other side of the equation—the
fact that continued use and release of persistent chemicals in the U.S.
can and does harm citizens in other countries around the world.
The process of adding new chemicals under the Stockholm Convention will
be informed by the precautionary principle, a concept that appears in
several places in treaty text and is strongly supported by NGOs around
the world. The principle of precaution recognizes that when there is evidence
that a chemical threatens “serious or irreversible damage,”
action should be taken even in the absence of full scientific certainty.
This principle recognizes the tremendous complexity of scientific research
on the environmental and health impacts of synthetic chemicals, and it
directs the international community to take protective action based on
available knowledge.
Most European countries are well ahead of the U.S. in embracing the precautionary
principle in both domestic and international policies. In negotiating
the Stockholm Convention, the U.S. strenuously opposed precautionary language,
while Europe strongly promoted it. This proved, along with the issue of
financing, to be one of the most contentious issues in the final hours
of treaty negotiations. On the domestic European front, Sweden recently
adopted a comprehensive set of concrete national environmental quality
objectives, many specifically based on the precautionary principle. In
Germany, producers of new chemicals must go through a precautionary process
of “alternatives assessment” to prove that other products less
harmful to the environment could not serve the purpose of the product
they are proposing to introduce.
During negotiation of the Rotterdam Convention, the U.S. clearly recognized
the potential impact of the more precautionary and protective policies
in Europe. Under the voluntary PIC procedure, a pesticide qualifies for
the PIC list if it has been banned or severely restricted in any country.
The alternative proposal, supported by the U.S. and eventually incorporated
into the final Rotterdam Convention, stipulates that a pesticide must
be banned in two countries in two separate regions to trigger the PIC
procedure. The regional boundaries used for the treaty lump the U.S. and
Canada in one region and the 43 countries of Europe in another. The U.S.
position on this issue stemmed from concerns that bans in Europe, based
on more precautionary policies, would lead the PIC process to potentially
undermine markets for U.S.-based pesticide manufacturers.
Despite U.S. reluctance, the international community is moving toward
precautionary approaches that will provide real protection for both human
health and the environment. Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson closed
the Stockholm Convention signing ceremony by highlighting the critical
importance of the precautionary principle: “Dangerous substances
must be replaced by harmless ones step by step. If there is the least
suspicion that new chemicals have dangerous characteristics, it is better
to reject them.”
Toward a New Foreign Policy
Key Recommendations
- The U.S. Senate should ratify both the Stockholm and Rotterdam conventions
by December 2001.
- The U.S. should develop a national implementation plan under the Stockholm
Convention, focusing particularly on the elimination of dioxin emissions.
- The U.S. should gradually phase out domestic production and use of
additional persistent chemicals that qualify as POPs under the Stockholm
Convention’s criteria. Washington should provide leadership by
proposing the addition of these chemicals under the convention.
Rapid U.S. ratification of the Stockholm and Rotterdam conventions will
spur other nations to join in meeting the goal of ratification by 50 countries
before September 2002. The U.S. played a key role in initiating the international
discussions that ultimately led to the Stockholm Convention, and it would
be fitting for Washington to play a leadership role in ensuring that the
toxics treaty is ratified.
If the treaties are to successfully traverse the required U.S. legislative
procedures by the end of this year, the Bush administration and the Senate
leadership must make a serious and immediate commitment to ratifying both
conventions. President Bush and the State Department made a public commitment
in April to move forward rapidly with ratification of the Stockholm Convention;
several Senate offices have indicated interest in rapidly ratifying the
treaty as well, and they are open to inclusion of the Rotterdam Convention
in the ratification process. The NGO community will be tracking progress
toward ratification with great interest and cautious optimism.
The first step to be taken by national governments under the Stockholm
Convention will be the development of national implementation plans outlining
how each country will meet the treaty objectives. Many countries are initiating
national implementation plans even before the convention comes into force;
in developing countries, these early efforts are supported by interim
funding for convention implementation through the Global Environment Facility.
In order to demonstrate a commitment to treaty implementation and to move
forward with the treaty objectives, the U.S. should immediately initiate
development of a national implementation plan.
The primary focus of a U.S. national implementation plan should involve
moving toward the elimination of POPs byproducts. Dioxins and furans pose
a tremendous health risk, and strategies that support their elimination
are strongly opposed by representatives of the chlorine and incineration
industries. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected
to release a dioxin reassessment in the coming months, and this document
could potentially form the cornerstone of the U.S. national implementation
plan. The report, however, has been plagued by years of controversy and
delay.
Public interest groups tracking the EPA’s work reviewing dioxins
assert that the agency’s analysis is based on methods inferior to
new analytical tools developed in Europe for long-term monitoring of dioxins.
The EPA’s recommendations are expected to focus on end-of-the-pipe
controls and minimization rather than the materials-substitution policies
mandated by the Stockholm Convention. In addition, the EPA is not likely
to recommend a phaseout of incineration, a major source of dioxin contaminants
in the United States. An effective U.S. national implementation plan must
overcome these shortcomings and develop an aggressive strategy to reduce
and eliminate U.S. dioxin emissions.
The EPA’s recommendations regarding dioxins will also influence
the national implementation plans of Canada and Mexico. Joint efforts
to manage chemicals under the environmental side-agreement to the North
America Free Trade Agreement have already resulted in regional action
plans regulating DDT, PCBs, and chlordane, and discussions are now shifting
to dioxins and furans. These efforts are likely to be directly incorporated
into national implementation plans for the three countries and should
reflect the progressive approach to dioxin elimination stipulated by the
Stockholm Convention.
The other critical component of a U.S. national implementation plan is
a strategy for evaluating use and gradual elimination of persistent chemicals
not yet listed under the Stockholm Convention. A number of states such
as Washington, California, and states in the Great Lakes region are pursuing
efforts to address the problem of ongoing use of persistent bioaccumulative
toxins. Progress underway through these state-level initiatives can help
the U.S. move toward national evaluation, reduction, and eventual elimination
of persistent pollutants.
In his Earth Day-linked announcement of support for the Stockholm Convention,
President Bush reminded the country that “the risks are great, and
the need for action is clear.” In this spirit, the Bush administration
must move forward rapidly and in good faith to include under the convention
persistent chemicals that are still in use domestically. If such action
is not taken, Washington will earn the unfortunate reputation on the international
stage of supporting (with great fanfare) global treaties that require
relatively little of the U.S. but spurning agreements—like the Kyoto
Protocol—that require more substantive domestic action.
Kristin S. Schafer, Program Coordinator with Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA), is coauthor of Nowhere to Hide: Persistent Toxic Chemicals in the U.S. Food Supply (PANNA, 2001). She coordinates PANNA’s POPs Elimination program and cofacilitates the IPEN working group on pesticides.
