[Index]
Geneva, 29 November 2002
New right-to-know treaty on pollution takes shape
Key elements of a new UN treaty which will strengthen the public access to
information about pollution fell into place as a week of intensive negotiations
in Geneva entered their final day. The treaty - which will be a protocol to
the UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making
and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (the Aarhus Convention) - will
make it easier for the public to find information about pollution and its
sources through a mandatory system of reporting by companies.
Under the protocol, countries will have to set up national pollution inventories,
known as pollutant release and transfer registers (PRTRs).
PRTRs require polluting companies to provide information on their releases
of certain polluting substances, such as greenhouse gases, dioxins and heavy
metals, to a national register accessible and searchable through the Internet.
Such registers are already in place in some countries.
This week, negotiators agreed upon the main features of the PRTR system,
which would effectively establish internationally recognized minimum standards
for PRTRs. These include lists of specific pollutants and polluting activities,
and ensuring public access to the data on the register. The protocol will
initially focus on information on pollution from large industrial facilities
but negotiators have opened the door to extending the registers to include
more diffuse sources, such as pollution from traffic to air and pollution
from agriculture to water.
It had already been decided that the protocol should be open to all countries,
including those which are not Parties to the parent-Convention and those which
are not members of UNECE. During this week's negotiations, a number of decisions
were made to accommodate the different types of existing PRTRs to allow for
as many countries as possible to become Parties to the protocol and thereby
bound by its provisions. This comes at the expense of the goal of having a
single, highly harmonized worldwide PRTR system and the greater comparability
of the data collected which would result from that. But negotiators considered
it more important to recognise the differences in the approaches, notably
between North America and Europe, and to accommodate both approaches to ensure
broader participation.
A number of issues will not be solved at this meeting and one last meeting
has therefore been scheduled for 27-31 January next year. The negotiators
are under pressure to finalize the protocol swiftly, as it is expected to
be ready for adoption by UNECE Environment Ministers when they meet at the
fifth "Environment for Europe" Conference in Kiev in May 2003.
For further information, please contact:
Jeremy WATES
Secretary to the Aarhus Convention
UNECE Environment and Human Settlements Division
Palais des Nations, office 332
CH - 1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Phone: +41 (0) 22 917 23 84 or +41 (0) 79 217 30 35
Fax: +41 (0) 22 907 01 07
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.unece.org/env/pp/
Ref: ECE/ENV/02/12