ABOUT IPEN:


  IPEN Introduction and History
  IPEN Organizational Structure
  The IPEN Mission (IPEN Dubai Declaration for a Toxic Free Future)
  IPEN Stockholm Declaration
       Language: English
       Language: French
       Language: Spanish

CONTACT:  jenniferfederico@ipen.org
Jennifer Federico IPEN Secretariat 1962 University Ave., Suite 4 Berkeley, CA 94704 USA Telephone + 1 510 704 1963 Fax + 1 510 883 9493


The International POPs Elimination Network:

Introduction:

The International POPs Elimination Network is a global network of public interest non-governmental organisations united in support of a common POPs elimination goal. The mission of IPEN, achieved through its participating organisations, is to work for the global elimination of persistent organic pollutants, on an expedited yet socially equitable basis. IPEN's mission is defined by both the IPEN Stockholm Declaration, which was adopted in 2001 after the Stockholm Convention was signed, and the IPEN Dubai Declaration for a Toxic Free Future, which was adopted in 2006 after the global community endorsed the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management.

Founded in early 1998 by a small number of NGOs, IPEN was formally launched with a public forum at the first session of the UNEP Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC1) in Montreal in June 1998, convened by UNEP to start negotiations to develop a global, legal instrument to control and/or eliminate persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Throughout the course of the five negotiating sessions, the Network grew to include more than 400 public health, environmental, consumer, and other non-governmental organisations in 65 countries. The Network worked to mobilise grassroots support for a global treaty to eliminate POPs. It also leveraged the resources and created a forum for NGOs and activists from around the world to participate in the negotiations. IPEN coordinated NGO conferences and workshops at each of the five negotiating sessions in Montreal (June 1998), Nairobi (January 1999), Geneva (September 1999), Bonn (March 2000), Johannesburg (December 2000) and at the diplomatic conference in Stockholm in May 2001. Since formal negotiations of the Convention text were completed, IPEN Participating Organisations and IPEN Working Groups have continued to participate in the ongoing UNEP discussions related to this Convention and are now focusing on ratifying and implementing the POPs Convention (now called the Stockholm Convention on POPs) in countries around the world.


History:

Since its inception early in 1998, IPEN has:

   Developed a POPs Elimination Platform, which summarizes some of the key findings about POPs' effects on the environment and human health and outlines the core principles that should be embodied in a global POPs agreement. At the conclusion of Convention negotiations, IPEN Participating Organisations reaffirmed their joint commitment to continue to work collectively to implement the POPs Convention by signing the Stockholm Declaration;

   Gained the participation of non-governmental organizations on six continents through their endorsement of the IPEN platform. IPEN continues to grow, and expects to gain the endorsement and participation of hundreds of NGOs around the world in the coming months;

   Convened NGOs, activists, and scientists for conferences that coincided with all POPs treaty negotiating sessions. IPEN was formally launched with a public forum at the first session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC1) in Montreal in June 1998. In January 1999, the network brought together representatives from around Africa for INC2 in Nairobi, Kenya. In September 1999, INC3 was held in Geneva, Switzerland. INC4 was held in Bonn, Germany in March 2000 and the final negotiating session was held in December 2000 in Johannesburg, South Africa;

   Established an organizational and governance structure consisting of a provisional Steering Committee, Secretariat, and two Co-Chairs. IPEN's current Co-Chairs are Dr. Mariann Lloyd-Smith, of the National Toxics Network in Australia, and Prof. Jamidu Katima, of AGENDA in Tanzania;

   Created Regional Focal Points in Africa, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, South Asia, Eastern Europe, Caucasus & Central Asia, and the Middle East. Regional Focal Points coordinate and communicate with IPEN Participating Organisations in their geographic regions, and report to the Network on the regions' needs, activities, and perspectives;

   Launched 3 Working Groups. In May 2001 IPEN established 3 Working Groups. Working Groups focus on specific activities related to POPs treaty implementation. These Working Groups are the Pesticides Working Group with a secretariat located in the office of Thanal in India; the Dioxin Wastes and Stockpiles Working Group, located at Arnika in the Czech Republic, and the Community Monitoring Working Group, located in the National Toxics Network in Australia; and

   Maintains an email listserve, mailing lists, and website for communication about POPs issues and the activities of IPEN and its Participating Organisations.




Organizational Structure:

IPEN is comprised of public interest, non-governmental organizations that support a common platform for the global elimination of POPs. The Participating Organizations (POs) of IPEN are those NGOs that have endorsed the POPs Elimination Platform and/or the Stockholm Declaration. Because the network is primarily engaged in facilitating information exchange and in supporting activities of its constituents, and because the purpose of the network does not include developing network-wide-policy statements, strategies, or action plans, a formal decision-making process for the network can be simple, flexible, and largely administrative in nature.

Steering Committee: IPEN has established a provisional Steering Committee. Any representative of an IPEN participating organization is welcome to join the Steering Committee; however, membership involves a significant commitment. At a minimum, Steering Committee members must:

Represent a non-governmental organization (NGO) that has (a) endorsed the IPEN POPs Elimination Platform or the Stockholm Declaration and (b) committed personnel and/or resources toward advancing the mission embodied in these statements;

Have both the commitment and the capacity to participate regularly in Steering Committee activities, including regular meeting attendance and preparation; and

Have concern with IPEN as a whole and be willing to take on some tasks on behalf of the IPEN global effort. The Steering Committee meets regularly by conference call, and does as much work as possible by email. It acts as a forum for identifying issues, formulating proposals for longer term structure and operating methods, and suggestions for working groups. The Steering Committee makes recommendations to be affirmed or acted upon by the full network through conference calls or by email.

Co-Chairs: IPEN is currently headed by a Northern and Southern Co-Chair.

Secretariat:
IPEN Secretariat
1962 University Ave., Suite 4
Berkeley, CA 94704
United States
email BjornBeeler at ipen.org
phone +1 510 704 1962
fax + 1 510 883 9493

The Secretariat functions include:

  Supporting and developing IPEN Working Goups;

  Steering Committee and Network coordination including setting up conference calls (scheduling, facilitation, agendas, and minutes);

  Maintenance of database of IPEN participating organizations, contacts, and resources;

  Coordination of IPEN communications, including listserve and website maintenance;

  Coordination and distribution of IPEN documents, publications, and other materials, including the POPs Elimination Platform, media briefing materials, position papers, proceedings of IPEN-sponsored events, and reports from each INC;

  Maintenance of calendar of meetings and events, including INCs and subsidiary body meetings, regional workshops, other intergovernmental meetings, and IPEN/NGO events.

Working Groups:
IPEN's Participating Organizations have formed a number of working groups. Such working groups agree to work within the policy framework of the IPEN platform and the Stockholm Declaration. Working groups may choose to issue policy statements or join in common activities, but such actions will reflect the view and endorsements only of the participating organizations within a given working group. In no case will a working group or individual NGO claim to represent the network as a whole.




IPEN Mission:


IPEN Dubai Declaration

Dubai, United Arab Emirates
6 February 2006

IPEN Declaration for a Toxics-Free Future

On the occasion today of the decision by governments and stakeholders to adopt a Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM), the International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN) declares our expanded commitment to work for and achieve by the year 2020 a Toxics-Free Future, in which all chemicals are produced and used in ways that eliminate significant adverse effects on human health and the environment, and where persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and chemicals of equivalent concern no longer pollute our local and global environments, and no longer contaminate our communities, our food, our bodies, or the bodies of our children and future generations.

As IPEN Participating Organizations, we declare our firm resolve to work for and achieve a Toxics-Free Future by the year 2020 by joining communities, workers, and other relevant civil society organizations, and in cooperation with governments and intergovernmental organizations, to:

1. Phase-out and ban the production and use of POPs and other chemicals of equivalent concern, and materials, products, and processes that generate and release POPs and other toxic byproducts, including those that contribute to significant health effects such as reproductive and developmental disorders (including birth defects and neurodevelopment problems such as behavioral and intellectual disorders), cancers, genetic mutations, and immune and endocrine dysfunctions;

2. Promote children's health as a paramount goal, recognizing that developing fetuses, infants, and children are uniquely vulnerable to the harmful effects of toxic chemicals during all stages of their development;

3. Promote and require substitution of cleaner products, materials, processes and practices, including clean production, clean technology transfer, and green chemistry, that avoid generation and release of toxic byproducts, giving priority to non-chemical alternatives whenever feasible;

4. Identify, secure, and properly destroy obsolete stockpiles and wastes containing POPs and other chemicals of concern by means that ensure complete destruction (i.e., chemical transformation) and that do not themselves generate or release toxic pollutants or otherwise cause injury to the health, safety, or well-being of workers and surrounding communities; clean up and remediate contaminated sites and environmental reservoirs; take measures to prevent the future accumulation of obsolete stockpiles of POPs and other chemicals of concern;

5. Halt combustion and other environmentally inappropriate methods of treating wastes and contaminated soils and sediments;

6. Ensure timely, full, and effective public participation by affected communities, local governments, and public interest NGOs and other civil society sectors (including the most vulnerable groups) in all decision-making processes related to chemical safety including, but not limited to, the implementation of internationally agreed conventions, programs, codes of conduct, and plans of action; promote cooperation between governments, public interest organizations, academia, industry, and others to ensure transparent multi-stakeholder approaches to decision-making, including through the provision of readily-accessible information, capacity building, awareness raising, public right-to-know, and other mechanisms essential to relevance at the local level;

7. Provide for a just transition whenever hazardous chemicals, polluting practices, or dirty technologies are phased out to ensure that special attention is given to the protection of impacted workers including women, peasants, and indigenous and other local communities, especially those in developing countries and economies in transition;

8. Achieve fundamental reform of current national chemicals laws, policies, and practices in all countries that is consistent with or exceeds the standards expressed in this declaration, and that includes provisions to, inter alia:

9. Adopt and implement comprehensive right-to-know laws in all countries, including laws establishing Pollutant Release and Transfer Registries (PRTRs), that ensure full, free, ready, and timely public access to information about all chemicals in commerce and in products and wastes, including data on their intrinsic properties and their effects on human health and the environment, information on their safer alternatives, and information on waste transfers on- and off-site; these laws should clearly state that any information pertinent to the health and safety of humans and the environment may not be regarded as confidential;

10. Implement the polluter pays principle, especially through the establishment of accessible, affordable, and effective liability and compensation mechanisms, to ensure that those who produce, use, and dispose of chemicals must pay the full costs of any harms to human health and the environment that they cause, and that victims of such harms are quickly and fully compensated;

11. Require chemical-producing industries to bear all legitimate costs that governments and others incur in establishing and sustaining robust chemical safety programs; further require such industries to contribute to mandatory, government-administered funds that pay for the remediation and clean-up of toxic spills and chemical stockpiles and wastes when the costs of remediation and clean-up are unrecoverable from the persons responsible for such harms;

12. Minimize and phase-out anthropogenic sources of mercury and methyl mercury in the environment;

13. Ensure that all governments establish and sustain effective national integrated chemical safety programs and infrastructure, especially governments of developing countries and countries with economies in transition, with full cooperation and coordination by all relevant ministries, including Environment, Health, Labor, Agriculture, Industry, Development, Education, and others; provide new and additional bilateral and multilateral financial assistance to help achieve this objective;

14. Promote the integration of chemical safety considerations into the poverty reduction strategies and development agendas of developing countries and countries with economies in transition, with a particular focus on vulnerable groups, including women, children, and indigenous and other local communities;

15. Adopt a life-cycle approach for all chemicals that includes promotion of cradle-to-cradle strategies and that considers the impacts of chemicals at every stage in their life-cycle, including not only the chemical itself, but also its by-products, break-down products and reaction products; that considers these in the course of a chemical's design, production, use, and re-use; in a chemical's presence in products, wastes, ecosystems, and human bodies; and in the chemical's ultimate environmental fate;

16. Promote sustainable, ecological agriculture, including organic farming, progressive substitution of pesticides and other chemical inputs in agriculture, community integrated pest management, agro-ecological methods of pest control and other sustainable agriculture techniques aimed at achieving good yields through practices that are healthy, environmentally sustainable, and financially affordable, especially for low-income groups, peasants and indigenous communities;

17. Substitute lower impact and integral methods of pest and vector control to achieve effective public health practices that are economically affordable, environmentally sound, and take into account timely, informed community participation;

18. Reduce and aim to eliminate the generation of wastes by promoting waste reduction at source; by changing the design, manufacture, purchase, use, and consumption of materials and products (including packaging) to reduce both their volume and their toxicity; and by promoting maximum reuse and recycling of non-toxic products and materials;

19. Acknowledge the common but differentiated responsibilities of all governments and of industry, NGOs, labor, and other stakeholders in view of their different contributions and vulnerabilities to global environmental degradation and health impacts from chemicals and the different financial and technical resources they command;

20. Encourage donor countries and donor agencies to provide new and additional financial and technical assistance that enables developing countries and countries with transitional economies to implement fully all of their commitments under international chemicals and wastes agreements and initiatives; provide additional assistance to identify and support chemical safety initiatives at the local level;

21. Establish a chemical safety focal area within the Global Environment Facility (GEF) with new and additional funds to encompass not only the GEF's present POPs Operational Program, but also to include additional operational programs that support implementation of other chemicals conventions, as well as integrated approaches to chemicals management called for in the SAICM;

22. Secure the ratification by all countries of the Stockholm Convention and other chemicals and wastes agreements including the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent; the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, including its Ban Amendment; the 1996 Protocol to the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter (London Convention); the ILO Convention 170 Concerning Safety in the Use of Chemicals at Work; and others;

23. Expeditiously expand the Stockholm Convention's current list of twelve POPs to incorporate other POPs of global concern and to establish appropriate commitments and obligations leading toward the elimination of all chemicals that exhibit POPs characteristics;

24. Expeditiously expand the list of chemicals covered by the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent (PIC) to include all chemicals and pesticides that present a hazard to human health or the environment under their ordinary conditions of use in developing countries or countries with economies in transition, including but not limited to chrysotile asbestos; discourage and prohibit the export to developing countries and economies in transition of obsolete, polluting technologies and chemical products that are banned in the country of origin;

25. Promote full and effective national implementation of the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS), with special emphasis on its implementation in chemicals-importing countries and on the rights inherent in the GHS to prohibit the importation of chemicals that are improperly classified or labeled.
-End-

Attachments:
IPEN Dubai Declaration as a Adobe Acrobat .pdf - ENGLISH   DOWNLOAD
IPEN Dubai Declaration as a Adobe Acrobat .pdf - RUSSIAN   DOWNLOAD
IPEN Dubai Declaration as a Adobe Acrobat .pdf - ARABIC   DOWNLOAD
Declaración de IPEN por un futuro libre de tóxicos - SPANISH   DOWNLOAD
IPEN Dubai Declaration as a Adobe Acrobat .pdf - PORTUGUES   DOWNLOAD
IPEN Dubai Declaration as a Adobe Acrobat .pdf - FRENCH   DOWNLOAD




Version: 2.0 (January 27 2007)