The Fifth Meeting of the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM5) for the negotiations of the future of the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) took place in Bonn, Germany from 25–29 September 2023. IPCP members were in attendance and provided their recaps.
Bonn Briefing: The End of a Long Journey Marks the Start of Another One
It was a very long week in Bonn for the negotiations of the future of the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM). Not only because the length of the meeting was extended from the usual five days to over nine days, but also because long discussions took place nearly every day past midnight. Despite all the anxiety and fatigue from the long negotiations, the pleasure was overwhelming at the moment when the new “Global Framework on Chemicals – For a Planet Free of Harm from Chemicals and Waste” was adopted on Saturday morning at 10 a.m. after a sleepless night. The overdue sound of the gavel marked the end of a long, long journey, but also the start of a new one.
SAICM was adopted in 2006 in Dubai. Initially, it was envisioned to be a framework convention on chemicals and waste, akin to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Due to a lack of agreement until the very last minute of the negotiations, the ambition had to be scaled down to a voluntary, multi-stakeholder policy framework (more details can be found here).
SAICM consisted of the Dubai Declaration on the International Chemicals Management – demonstrating political will; an Overarching Policy Strategy – setting out the objectives, institutional arrangements and other elements of the framework; and a Global Plan of Action – outlining over 100 international action items for tackling various issues. As part of implementation, SAICM launched a Quick Start Programme (QSP), with a Trust Fund to support enabling activities for the sound management of chemicals and waste in the Global South. IPCP led one QSP project, providing training on chemicals assessment in Armenia, Chile and Ghana (more details can be found at here). In addition, SAICM has also identified eight issues of concern for concerted global action, including endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), environmentally persistent pharmaceutical pollutants (EPPP), highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs), and so on. Additionally, SAICM identified leading intergovernmental organizations to tackle individual issues, to which IPCP has provided support, e.g., on EDCs.
Most importantly, SAICM inherited the so-called “2020 goal” of sound management of chemicals throughout their life cycle and of hazardous wastes. This was agreed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002: i.e., by 2020, chemicals are used and produced in ways that lead to the minimization of significant adverse effects on human health and the environment. The optimism of making progress could also be seen in the pre-defined meeting schedule of SAICM’s governing body, the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM), with its first four meetings being set to take place every three years since 2006 and the last ICCM5 set to take place five years later in 2020. Subsequently, the “2020 goal” was reaffirmed at the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in 2012, and integrated as Target 12.4 in the Sustainable Development Goals, marking considerable political commitment on sound management of chemicals and waste.
By the time of ICCM4 in 2015, member states and other stakeholders realized that it was not possible to achieve the 2020 goal (or rather how little progress was made) and SAICM would nevertheless end in 2020. Therefore, at ICCM4, an intersessional process was launched to prepare recommendations on the sound management of chemicals and waste beyond 2020 for consideration at ICCM5. During the negotiations at ICCM4, some visionary country delegates proposed to initiate an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) for the intersessional process, which is typically set for establishing legally binding agreements. This could have been a key step to raise the political profile of sound management of chemicals and waste. However, due to a lack of support from other country delegates, only a more informal intersessional process was launched, with three meetings planned – two meetings before the third meeting of the Open-ended Working Group (OEWG3; the official preparatory meeting of ICCM5) and one meeting between OEWG3 and ICCM5.
The first Intersessional Process meeting took place in February 2017 in Brasilia, Brazil. IPCP began participation in the Intersessional Process at its second meeting in March 2018, with a keen focus on strengthening the science-policy interfaces on chemicals and waste, which was inspired by the discussion at the first meeting in Brasilia. The story on how IPCP has motivated and worked with Member States and other stakeholders over the years, resulting in a ground-breaking resolution at the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in March 2022 to establish an intergovernmental science-policy panel on chemicals, waste and pollution prevention, deserves its own post, and thus, is not elaborated further here–for more information see the Science paper (free access available from the IPCP page on this effort).
The first couple of Intersessional Process meetings were confusing, with one major question being whether the outcome of negotiations would be one entity (a framework of sound management of chemicals and waste beyond 2020, i.e., a beyond-2020 framework) or two entities (the successor of SAICM and a beyond-2020 framework). This question could have been avoided, as many Member States and other stakeholders were eager to raise the ambition of the sound management of chemicals and waste by having one single strong framework. However, one specific stakeholder had their own political ambition of hosting the future framework, in parallel to the existing secretariat of SAICM in Geneva, but this did not succeed. Meanwhile, much of the valuable negotiation time was spent on clarifying this seemingly simple question, going round and round and back and forth.
As of 2019, three Intersessional Process meetings and OEWG3 had taken place, but progress on substantive matters was limited. Member States and other stakeholders then decided to have an extra Intersessional Process in early 2020, several months before ICCM5, to finalize the negotiations.
As the readers would have guessed, plans are always made to be changed., As the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted life in early 2020, the SAICM Intersessional Process struggled to adapt to the new reality. Thus, the fourth meeting was postponed indefinitely.
Old Chinese wisdom says, “good fortune follows upon disaster, disaster lurks within good fortune”. Thanks to the rapid development of online communication tools, four virtual working groups were established towards the end of 2020 to continue the negotiations on various substantive matters. However, while online meetings have become a new normal in many areas, virtual negotiations did not prove to work for the Intersessional Process for several reasons, such as unstable internet connections in lower income countries, and challenges in organizing bilateral meetings between negotiators during the short online meetings, to name a few. The virtual working groups were discontinued in early 2021. Nevertheless, thanks to the great leadership and heavy lifting of the co-facilitators of the virtual working groups, substantial progress was made on several fronts.
Finally, the fourth (and in-person) meeting of the Intersessional Process took place in September 2022 in Bucharest, Romania. While it was seemingly the same meeting as planned two years earlier, continuing the same substantive topics, the atmosphere had changed, which cast a shadow on the meeting.
On the one hand, the long break resulted in a major loss of momentum and institutional memory, marked by many changes of personnel and losing track of what had been negotiated and agreed upon. On the other hand, many other more important negotiation processes had taken place, or were scheduled to take place, competing for the already limited attention and resources on chemicals and waste issues. As aforementioned, UNEA earlier in the year adopted the ground-breaking resolutions mandating two negotiation processes to establish an intergovernmental science-policy panel on chemicals, waste and pollution prevention and a legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution. These two processes with a total of eight meetings planned by 2024, together with many other ordinary and extraordinary meetings of existing legally binding conventions to catch up the time lost during the COVID-19 pandemic, formed a hectic schedule for delegates around the world. The challenge was particularly acute for those participants with less than a handful of persons responsible for chemicals and waste issues, which is the case for most countries and stakeholders.
As a result, the fourth meeting in Bucharest made slow progress on the text. Nevertheless, the meeting reached one key milestone after several long days and nights, namely to have one single consolidated document on the various aspects of a future framework. After the Bucharest meeting adjourned, a second part was re-opened early 2023 in Nairobi. Similarly to the first part in Bucharest, the meeting was slow. While considerable progress was made on the single consolidated document, many parts of the text still remained bracketed (the UN way to highlight text that has not yet been agreed upon) until the very last minute. Therefore, the fourth meeting was again adjourned in Nairobi, with a third part scheduled immediately before the final meeting of ICCM5 where a decision of the future framework had to be taken.
That was where we were when arriving in Bonn in September 2023 for the final round of negotiations. It started with two days of regional consultations for countries within the same UN region to exchange information and align thinking as much as possible. Then, it was the third part of the fourth meeting of the Intersessional Process for two days. As in many other cases, time pressure does help. Progress was made on many fronts, particularly with regard to the institutional arrangements. But major challenges and divergence remained: inter alia, on issues such as capacity building and financing requests from the Global South, which have been sticking issues in many environmental policy forums; on the scope of the future framework, whether it should cover “all” chemicals and waste or chemicals and “associated” waste; as well as on the operating principles with sticking points on text such as the precautionary principle, human rights, and gender mainstreaming.
Despite numerous diplomatic efforts to overcome these roadblocks, Sunday midnight quickly approached, when the fourth meeting of the Intersessional Process had to be closed to make room for ICCM5 starting on Monday. Co-chairs of the Intersessional Process tried their best to bridge diverging views. More text got cleaned, but not the aforementioned major issues …
On Monday, ICCM5 officially started, with the brilliant performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 by a youth orchestra. Inspired by the “Victory Symphony”, delegates started a new week of negotiations, not only on the single consolidated document, but also on over 25 draft resolutions that have been proposed by various stakeholders for the operationalization of the future framework. Despite the challenges ahead, delegates were hopeful to finalize the negotiations by Wednesday evening so that good news could be delivered at the High-Level Segments starting on Thursday.
Dreams are big but reality is cruel. On the consolidated document side, sticking issues remained sticky. In particular, the African states insisted on establishing a globally coordinated tax of 0.5% on the production value of basic chemicals to support low income countries for implementing the future framework, which was not supported by many others.
On the draft resolution side, considerable progress was made on multiple aspects, but not on some other ones, particularly a capacity building hub proposed by the chemical industry, and the proposals by the African states to establish an alliance to address highly hazardous pesticides (HHPs) and a code of conduct on chemicals management.
For the capacity building hub, the industry’s proposal was to establish a match-making platform for actors who have demands and actors who may be able to meet such demands. It is a simple but interesting idea. However, the lack of details on its operationalization raised significant concern among many stakeholders, worrying that it would be a greenwashing move by the industry and could generate way too much work for the future secretariat, adding to the many tasks they already have to operationalize the framework. Such concern certainly had its justification. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) ran such a match-making mechanism before, and there were many more demands than matching support offers. Ways to resolve such imbalance in supply and demand remains unclear. In addition, while the chemical industry was willing to absorb some of the costs, up to 500 k USD, it is unclear how the remainder would be funded.
Both proposals from African countries received considerable pushback despite their voluntary nature. For the one on HHPs, the divergence existed on the scope of the proposed alliance, whether it should aim to “phase out” or “phase down” HHPs, and whether it should address HHPs in general or it should address them only when the risk of HHPs cannot be managed and there were safer alternatives. On the proposed code of conduct, many objected to the proposal and time was insufficient to understand and resolve the divergence.
By the time of Wednesday evening, many of these issues remained unresolved and negotiations had to continue while the High-Level Segment took place on Thursday and Friday. The host country, Germany, tried their best to bridge the points of divergence. On Thursday, the German delegates announced that Germany will provide 10 million EUR for the implementation of the future framework, and on Friday morning, they doubled the amount. Boosted by these commitments and thanks to much creative thinking, negotiation on the scope of the future framework had a breakthrough on Friday morning. It was agreed that the future framework would be called “Global Framework on Chemicals – For a Planet Free of Harm from Chemicals and Waste”, which allows different stakeholders to interpret the inclusion of waste the way they see fit.
Meanwhile, diverging views persisted on the financing mechanism, particularly with regard to the proposed global coordinated tax. The donor countries agreed to revive the QSP into a new fund, but the proponents of the tax would also like to see the proposed global coordinated tax. Despite the long negotiations in large groups, smaller groups, and even smaller informal groups, it appeared that both sides could not bridge the gap.
It was Friday evening, long past the initial planned closing time of 6 p.m. The final closing session was postponed and postponed without any clear sign when it would take place. Delegates gathered in the main room, but no one seemed to know what was going to happen. That was a moment of disorientation and fear since no one knew whether or not the framework would be adopted. Anyone could have used the situation for their own advantage to block the adoption of the framework. If the framework would not be adopted, it would not only mean a waste of eight years of negotiations, but also no one knew when the next opportunity would present itself for establishing a comprehensive international framework on sound management of chemicals and waste.
It is difficult to think back now how everything was resolved during that sleepless night. After several long nights of negotiations until 3 or 4 a.m., nearly everyone was exhausted, both physically and mentally. Despite the free cola and sandwiches generously provided by the German organisers, it was becoming more and more difficult for many to concentrate and follow all the conversations, especially after midnight. But one thing was clear that everyone wanted the framework to happen. Finally, at 8:26 on Saturday morning, 14 hours after the initial planned closing time, ICCM5 plenary passed the resolution adopting the Global Framework on Chemicals and the High-level Declaration. The president of the conference could not control her emotion anymore, with tears in her eyes. It was hard to tell whether it was the tears of excitement, or the relief that all the previous efforts were finally not in vain. But yes, after eight years of negotiations, finally the world has the Global Framework on Chemicals to further foster international concerted action on the sound management of chemicals and waste. While the successful implementation of the framework will be another long journey itself with many challenges to be expected and solved, we are grateful that the ICCM5 courageously finished a long and difficult journey.
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Daily reports prepared by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Earth Negotiations Bulletin can be found at https://enb.iisd.org/iccm5-saicm-intersessional-process-resumed-4-sound-management-chemicals-waste-beyond-2020.