IPEN Newsletter No.1:

February 2007

Welcome to the new IPEN newsletter!! This newsletter will be a monthly brief of POPs chemical safety issues of interest to IPEN Participating Organizations (POs).



This month's newsletter includes the following headlines:
1. A NOTE FROM THE IPEN CO-CHAIRS
2. POPs & CHEMICALS MEETINGS & EVENTS (2006 in Review & 2007 Outlook)
3. IPEP NEWS & UPDATE: Regional Assessments on the way!
4. SAICM UPDATE
5. FUTURE NEWSLETTERS
6. CALENDAR OF EVENTS



1- A NOTE FROM THE IPEN CO-CHAIRS

Below is an excerpt from the IPEN Co-Chairs' 2006 Brief, which Prof. Jamidu Katima and Dr. Mariann Lloyd-Smith circulated via the IPEN listserve last month:

"The past year, 2006, brought with it many challenges that as a network we had to face. These have included the adoption of the SAICM Strategic Approach (including the infamous Table C which includes many of our core chemical safety principles), the growing resurgence of DDT use, the acceptance by the Basel Convention of the unacceptably high "low POPs content" and the increasing number of new candidate POPs to be added to the Convention, which we must review and support.


Photo: IPEN Co-Chairs Jamidu and Mariann at the IPEN International Gathering, Budapest, Hungary, Sept. 2006.


In 2006 IPEN was very active and together we have taken some significant large steps forward as the IPEN Network matures. A number of IPEN initiatives ripened and were delivered under the guidance of the IPEN Steering Committee, IPEN Secretariat and IPEP Global Management office, which were only realized due to the commitment from the IPEN Participating Organizations.

In brief our 2006 accomplishments include:

  • Full implementation of the International POPS Elimination Project (IPEP)
  • Adoption of the IPEN Dubai Declaration for a Toxic Free Future
  • Adoption of the 2006 IPEN Governance Document
  • IPEN influence in the global chemical safety regime
  • IPEN participation in numerous international chemical safety meetings
  • Enhanced global IPEN PO solidarity and collaboration by convening scores of IPEN international gatherings and collaborative events
  • Successful submission by IPEN POs of proposals to the GEF Small Grants Program"

    Please inform the Secretariat if you would like copy of the entire email (jenniferfederico@ipen.org).




    2- POPs & CHEMICALS MEETINGS & EVENTS

    2006 in Review

    International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM) in Dubai, UAE
    2006 began with the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM) in Dubai, UAE in February. IPEN adopted and launched the IPEN Dubai Declaration for a Toxics-Free Future at the ICCM (The ICCM was the culmination of the three-year negotiations to develop a Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM).). This declaration reflects IPEN's commitment to global chemical safety and to work towards a Toxics-Free Future by 2020. Since its adoption, the declaration has been translated into six languages and utilized as an outreach tool to engage new groups and broaden IPEN's constituency. At the ICCM in Dubai, IPEN coordinated the involvement of 32 NGO participants from 21 countries.

    While the network continues to view the elimination of POPs and other persistent toxic substances as its primary objective, the SAICM experience facilitated a broader discussion of chemical safety strategies within IPEN. This includes one of the most critical outcomes from the ICCM to advance IPEN's mission, which was the recognition of chemical safety as an essential component to the sustainable development agenda. Ministers of over 140 governments endorsed the SAICM High Level Declaration, which states: "The sound management of chemicals is essential if we are to achieve sustainable development, including the eradication of poverty and disease, the improvement of human health and the environment and the elevation and maintenance of the standard of living in countries at all levels of development."


    Photo: Late night IPEN consultations in the final hours before the Strategic Approach was adopted.

    The Stockholm Convention Secretariat organized numerous meetings in 2006 that IPEN POs participated in to define and defend our positions. Below is a summary of the 2006 events. Please note that the IPEN "Report Back" for each of these events is available upon request to the IPEN Secretariat (jenniferfederico@ipen.org).




    2nd Expert Group on Best Available Techniques /Best Environmental Practices (BAT/BEP) Guidelines met in Switzerland in November 2006. Four IPEN experts attended the meeting, and agreed that it was a success. Many of the proposals put forth by the IPEN delegates were approved, and in general the BAT/BEP Guidelines were improved significantly compared to earlier drafts. The Co-Chair of the IPEN Dioxin, PCB and Waste Working Group, Jindrich Petrlik (ARNIKA, Czech Republic), reported that the current BAT/BEP Guidelines ought to be approved at COP3 this May in Senegal. This IPEN Position is detailed in the meeting report, which is available upon request.




    2nd Meeting of the Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee (POPRC) occurred in November in Geneva, Switzerland. The Committee is now processing ten candidates of new POPs to be included in the Stockholm Convention.

    These ten new POPs are:
    1. Chlordecone
    2. Alpha HCH (a lindane isomer)
    3. Beta HCH (a lindane isomer)
    4. Lindane
    5. Hexabromobiphenyl
    6. Octabromodiphenyl ether
    7. Pentabromodiphenyl ether
    8. Pentachlorobenzene
    9. PFOS
    10. Short-chained chlorinated paraffins

    The Advance Report of the POPRC on the work of its 2nd meeting can be found (in English) at: http://www.pops.int/documents/meetings/poprc_2/meeting_docs/report/default.htm




    Also in November, the 2nd Expert Group Meeting to Assess DDT Production and Use and its Alternatives took place. Henry Rene Diouf (PAN Afrique) and Paul Saoke (PSR Kenya) attended this meeting, described as a confrontation between WHO and their partners supporting Parties to re-introduce DDT on one side and UNEP with its allies that are convinced about the need to phase out DDT on the other side. The IPEN Report Back on this meeting was circulated earlier, and is available upon request.




    In December, the 3rd Expert Meeting to Further Develop the Standardized Toolkit for Identification and Quantification of Dioxin and Furan Releases took place in Geneva, Switzerland, and IPEN Sr. Science Advisor Pat Costner attended. The Toolkit will not be submitted again for adoption by COP3 but a new edition will be submitted to COP4 (in 2009). For IPEN, the goal of participating in the Toolkit meetings is to arrive at an agreed process for reviewing/improving and periodically updating the Toolkit so that all Parties at all levels of development/industrialization are well equipped to: identify their dioxin sources, make realistic estimations of dioxin releases from those sources, prioritize their dioxin sources, prepare and execute plans for reducing releases from their dioxin sources, and document that they are meeting their obligations to continuously minimize with the aim of eliminating dioxin releases from the sources within their national boundaries. Anyone with questions about the Toolkit Meeting may address them to the IPEN Dioxin Working Group: jindrich.petrlik@arnika.org.





    2007 Outlook

    COP3 - May 2007

    As 2007 gets underway, preparation for the 3rd Conference of the Parties (COP3) to be held in Senegal 30 April - 4 May has begun. The 2006 meetings (noted above) will contribute to the debate in Senegal, as well as the planned 2007 pre-COP3 events (noted below). The IPEN Working Groups are focused on specific topics, and the IPEN Steering Committee recently highlighted the following seven COP3 topics of interest.


    1) BAT/BEP & Dioxin topics
    2) POPRC
    3) Effectiveness Evaluation
    4) DDT
    5) Financial Resources & GEF Funding
    6) Implementation Plans/NIPs
    7) Open-Ended Working Group On Non-Compliance

    The IPEN Positions on these issues will be developed in March, and circulated in April. COP3 meeting information is available online from the Stockholm Convention Secretariat at: http://www.pops.int/documents/meetings/cop_3/default.htm




    Global Monitoring of POPs (GMP)- January 2007 Second Meeting of the Provisional Ad Hoc Technical Working Group (TWG) on POPs Monitoring

    Sharyle Patton, IPEN Co-Chair to the IPEN Community Monitoring Working Group and Commonweal, US, participated.

    The second meeting of the Technical Working Group (TWG) on Global Monitoring Plan (GMP) was held in Geneva at the end of January.

    Background on POPs Monitoring/evaluation: The purpose of the Global Monitoring Plan is to provide a harmonized organizational framework for the collection of comparable monitoring data on the presence of the POPs listed in Annex A. B and C of the Convention. This should begin to identify trends in POPs levels over time as well as provide information on their regional and global environmental transport. The Global Monitoring Plan will set guidelines and procedures for data sufficiently robust to support effectiveness evaluation.

    At its first meeting, the Technical Working Group (in October 2006) revised a 2003 guidance document, and now after the second meeting the Global Monitoring Plan will now be presented at COP 3 for comment, discussion, and approval.

    The first evaluation report, which will be a presentation of baseline data, is to be delivered to the COP4 in 2009. Documents from the second meeting of the TWG for the GMP can be found at: http://ww.pops.int/documents/meetings/gmptwg/default.htm.

    Key decisions and points for consideration in regard to the Global Monitoring of POPs can be noted as:

      1. The GMP will begin to monitor air and human milk.

      2. National level capacity building will begin, with assistance from UNEP, to enable countries to produce comparable and scientifically robust data.

      3. Data to be collected for the first evaluation -to establish baseline exposure for POPs chemicals- will be primarily derived from existing monitoring programs. Data collected is intended to help measure ambient exposures rather than to identify hotspots.

      4. Transparency and inclusiveness are considered to be essential in all aspects of GMP design, conduct, and reporting.

      5. The TWG will recommend at COP3 that an entity be created, which will oversee the coordination and implementation of the GMP, help coordinate activities between regions tasked with data collection, and identify those regions or countries where capacity building for monitoring will be needed.

    For more information on the TWG or GMP please contact Sharyle Patton at spatton@igc.org.




    UNEP Governing Council - February 2007

    Additionally, in February, the UNEP Governing Council met in Nairobi, Kenya. Jack Weinberg, Senior Advisor to IPEN, attended the meeting and sent out a report upon his return via the IPEN listserve. He stated:

    "The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) held the 24th session of its Governing Council (GC) in Nairobi Kenya, February 5-9, 2007. Several topics relating to Chemical Management were on the agenda. The topic receiving most attention was international action to reduce risks to human health and the environment from exposure to mercury. Other topics included action on lead and cadmium, the prevention of illegal international traffic in hazardous chemicals, and the strategic approach to international chemicals management (SAICM)."

    Please inform the Secretariat if you would like a copy of Jack's entire email (jenniferfederico@ipen.org).





    3- IPEP NEWS & UPDATE

    By Joe DiGangi

    A total of 350 NGOs participated in the International POPs Elimination Project (IPEP), a global project to enable NGOs to prepare for Stockholm Convention implementation in their countries. IPEP ended up supporting more than 290 project activities in 65 countries developing countries and countries with economies in transition. Congratulations to all the NGOs who participated!

    IPEP project activities included, among others: preparing an overall description of the POPs situation in a country; mapping obsolete pesticide stockpiles and POPs-contaminated sites, and promoting their proper cleanup and disposal; sampling soil, eggs, fish, and people for POPs; investigating new POPs such as brominated flame retardants and Lindane; raising awareness among farmers, rag-pickers, college students, women, agricultural workers, children, physicians, government officials, informal sector workers and others; proposing new methods of waste prevention; documenting the continuing use of POPs pesticides and promoting alternative farming methods.

    All project reports and updated summaries will soon be available on the IPEP section of the IPEN website (see below). The reports will be searchable by key words so you can find projects that other NGOs have done on topics that interest you.

    To keep the forward momentum, IPEN is now developing additional proposals to the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) which will build on our past experience and advance the work in the regions. More information will follow as soon as it is available.

    In the coming months, the IPEN Regional Hubs will be reaching out to conduct Regional Assessments of NGO needs, capacities and opportunities related to chemical safety. These will be used to develop a regional assessment report which will provide ideas for strategies and campaigning in the region. In addition, Hubs will construct a database of NGOs and establish a list serve on chemical safety topics in each region so that NGOs can access information more easily in the appropriate UN language.

    Links
    IPEP website: http://www.oztoxics.org/ipepweb/index.html

    IPEP final report http://www.ipen.org/ipenweb/ipep/ipepfinalreport8.pdf

    Citizen's Guide to the Stockholm Convention http://www.oztoxics.org/ipepweb/library/citizen%E2%80%99s%20guide/Citizens%20Guide%20English_pdf/Start_CitizensGuide_Ebook_English.pdf

    Guía Ciudadana para la aplicación del Convenio del Estocolmo http://www.oztoxics.org/ipepweb/library/citizen%E2%80%99s%20guide/Citizens%20Guide%20Spanish_pdf/Start_CitizensGuide_Ebook_Spanish.pdf

    IPEP Egg Study http://www.oztoxics.org/ipepweb/egg/world%20map%20index%20egg.html





    4- SAICM UPDATE

    As many of you know, in Budapest we agreed to an IPEN SAICM Implementation Document (available upon request). The IPEN Secretariat is now working to secure funds so that we can begin to put into action the steps that are outlined in the Document. Updates about progress in this area will be shared with the Network as regularly as possible.

    Regional SAICM meetings began in 2006 in Africa and Central Europe. For 2007, meetings have been confirmed for the Asia Pacific (21-23 May in Bangkok, Thailand) region and for the Arab States (1-2 April in Cairo, Egypt), and talks are underway to organize a meeting for GRULAC.

    Additionally, an informal EU-JUSSCANNZ meeting on SAICM will take place on 12 June in Paris, prior to the OECD meeting (13 to 15 June 2007).

    Joe DiGangi and Jack Weinberg (Environmental Health Fund, US, and IPEP Coordinator and IPEN Senior Advisor, respectively) recently submitted an IPEN article to the SAICM Newsletter, enclosed below:

      The International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN) supports effective implementation of the Stockholm Convention on POPs and now also supports implementation of SAICM. IPEN's goal is to: . . . work for and achieve by the year 2020 a Toxics-Free Future … 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.

      IPEN has just completed work on a global project to help countries prepare for implementation of the Stockholm Convention called the International POPs Elimination Project (IPEP). More than 350 NGOs in 65 developing and transition countries participated in IPEP project activities, many of which addressed activities called for in the SAICM Global Plan of Action. Project activities included: preparing an overall description of the POPs situation in a country; mapping obsolete pesticide stockpiles and POPs-contaminated sites, and promoting their proper cleanup and disposal; sampling soil, eggs, fish, and people for POPs; investigating new POPs such as brominated flame retardants and Lindane; raising awareness among farmers, rag-pickers, college students, women, agricultural workers, children, physicians, government officials, informal sector workers and others; proposing new methods of waste prevention; documenting the continuing use of POPs pesticides and promoting alternative farming methods.

      In September 2006, IPEN met in Budapest with 73 NGO delegates present from more than 35 countries present and unanimously reaffirmed IPEN's commitment to help facilitate NGO and CSO engagement in effective SAICM implementation. The meeting agreed that four key principles are essential to effective national chemicals policy reform and should be promoted by NGOs and civil society in all countries. These principles are: the Precautionary Principle; the principle of No Data, No Market; the Substitution Principle; and the Right to Know.

      IPEN also agreed it wished to initiate a global SAICM Outreach Campaign to:

      1) Raise awareness within civil society in eighty or more countries that exposure to toxic chemicals represents a source of significant harm to human health and to the environment;

      2) Build understanding and support for SAICM and for its 2020 goal which civil society;

      3) Build understanding of the four basic principles that are essential to effective national chemicals policy reform: precaution; no data, no market; substitution; and right-to-know;

      4) Secure commitments from NGOs and civil society organizations to contribute to effective implementation of SAICM with the aim of achieving a Toxics-Free Future; and

      5) Create a global data base of NGOs and CSOs who have agreed to contribute to SAICM implementation, and summarizing their contributions to serve as a basis for reporting on civil society contributions to SAICM implementation at the second session of the International Conference on Chemicals Management.

      The above campaign has not yet begun due to a lack of funding support, so far, for SAICM implementation efforts of this kind.

    A link to the whole SAICM Newsletter is here: http://www.chem.unep.ch/saicm/newsletter/SAICM%20newsletter%204%20February%2007.pdf





    5- FUTURE NEWSLETTERS

    In future newsletters, we will have a section that will focus on a regional component within IPEN. As with IPEP, the regions consist of:

    Anglophone Africa (March)
    Latin America (July)
    Central and Eastern Europe (April)
    Middle East (August)
    Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia (May)
    South Asia (September)
    Francophone Africa (June)
    Southeast Asia (October)

    The IPEN Secretariat will invite input and contributions from IPEN POs each month from the featured region. This could include specific articles, press releases, action alerts, updates, etc. Moreover it will provide the opportunity for your NGO to share its work with the global IPEN network.

    For March Anglophone Africa will be the featured region for the IPEN Newsletter.
    Therefore IPEN POs located in Anglophone Africa are invited to submit a short article (under 500 words), press release, or other news/updates from this region for the March newsletter. Please send your emails to Jennifer at the IPEN Secretariat at: jenniferfederico@ipen.org





    Photo: Press conference in Budapest, challenging the World Health Organization's September 2006 statement, giving DDT a "clean bill of health."





    6- IPEN CALENDAR OF EVENTS

    March
    3rd-5th Regional BAT/BEP Consultation- Nairobi, Kenya

    5th PAN Asia meeting in the 1st week of March. The meeting will be organized by PANAP in Penang, Malaysia and will be called: "Strategy Meeting on International Instruments". The aim is to look at the preparations for COP3

    7th The Health & Environment Alliance and Pesticides Action Network Europe are co-organising an event in the European Parliament (Brussels): "Pesticide use reduction for better health: scientific evidence and best practices for a European approach."

    April
    1st - 2nd Arab SAICM Regional Meeting- Cairo, Egypt

    16th - RAP-AL/PAN Meso - American MeetingRAP-AL / PAN Latin America will be the organizers and it will be held in Costa Rica on 19 April for RAPAL focal points and government officials from Mesoamerica and the Caribbean. It will be a one-day workshop to exchange information on the progress for the Implementation of the Stockholm and Rotterdam Conventions.

    17th - 18th NERC Knowledge Transfer Network on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) presents the 2nd Network Conference on POPs: Legacy and Current Use POPs- Birmingham, UK

    25th Africa Malaria Day

    30th - 4 (May) COP3- Dakar, Senegal

    May
    9th -18th 5th GKSS School of Environmental Research to be held in Northern Germany. The title of the school is: "Persistent Pollution: Past, Present and Future"

    21st - 23rd Asia Pacific Regional SAICM Meeting- Bangkok, Thailand

    If your organization is participating in or hosting an event that you would like me to list here, please let me know! Jenniferfederico@ipen.org





    REMINDER:
    If your organization has yet to complete the IPEN online survey, please take a minute to do so!! It's very short and simple, and by completing it you can be assured that your organization is listed in the IPEN database. Go here: http://www.oztoxics.org/ipen/IPENform1.html to complete it. Many thanks!!




    Questions - Inquiries - Comments?
    Please contact jenniferfederico@ipen.org

    IPEN Secretariat:
    1962 University Ave., Suite 4, Berkeley, CA 94704, USA
    Tel: 1 (510) 704 1962/3 " Fax: 1 (510) 883 9493
    www.ipen.org








    Version: 2.0 (March, 2007)