GOVERNMENTS, INDUSTRY AND ENVIRONMENTAL
GROUPS DEBATE TRANSPARENCY IN NEW CHEMICALS LAW
Geneva, 6 July 2001
A second round of negotiations to work out a
new international law requiring companies to report to the public on their
polluting emissions, under the auspices of the United Nations Economic
Commission for Europe (UNECE), is ending today. The new chemicals law will
come under the UNECE Aarhus Convention, which is intended to give the public
more information and a greater say in environmental issues.
Under the chemicals law, countries will have
to establish pollution inventories known as pollutant release and transfer
registers (PRTRs). PRTRs have already proved extremely effective in reducing
pollution, even though they regulate information about pollution and not
pollution itself. But by systematically bringing information on emissions into
the public domain, PRTRs create public pressure to reduce pollution.
Technical experts from governments, NGOs and
industry have already held three days of informal discussions over issues such
as which chemicals should be covered, which types of activities should be
required to report and to what extent transfers of pollutants between
companies should be covered as well as releases into the environment (2-4 July
2001).
They identified toxic and polluting
substances regulated under the European Union's European Pollutant Emission
Register (EPER), including carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides,
dioxins and heavy metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium and arsenic, as
important to include in the registers. In addition, there was broad support
among the experts for the inclusion of ozone-depleting substances (CFCs, HCFCs
and Halons), though some experts pointed out that further steps might be
needed to make the data available on a company-specific basis as required
under a PRTR. However, no agreement has so far been reached on the inclusion
of carcinogenic substances listed on Group I of the World Health
Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer – Group I being
the list of substances proven to cause cancer in humans.
At the negotiators’ meeting in Geneva
yesterday, an overwhelming majority of delegations stated that the new law
should take the form of a protocol to the Aarhus Convention. There was also
general support for the protocol being open for accession by non-UNECE
countries and non-Parties to the Convention. The latter possibility could
prove to be of interest to countries such as the United States and Canada
which have extensive experience with mandatory pollution registers but have
not signed up to the Aarhus Convention.
The draft protocol on pollutant release and
transfer registers is expected to be ready in time for adoption at the Kiev
Ministerial ‘Environment for Europe’ Conference (May 2003).
For more information, please contact:
Jeremy WATES
UNECE Environment and Human Settlements Division
Palais des Nations, office 332
CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Phone: (+41 22) 917 23 84
Fax: (+41 22) 907 01 07 or 917 06 34
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: http://www.unece.org/env/pp/
Ref: ECE/ENV/01/05