At-A-Glance Views
Hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) involves injecting wells at high pressure with water, proppants, radioactive tracers and large quantities of chemical additives (including many that are toxic and some with POPs characteristics) to fracture the formation and produce new cracks and pathways to help extract natural gas.
The Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) was established at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, recognizing the health and environmental harms caused by chemical exposure and representing a global political commitment to reform how chemicals are produced and used in order to minimize those harms.
With SAICM set to end in 2020, IPEN raised concern with governments about the 2020 SAICM timeline and the need to initiate a UN process to address global chemical policies after 2020. As a SAICM Bureau member, IPEN successfully urged government members of the SAICM Bureau to address the timeline, which eventually placed the issue on the agenda, noting IPEN’s thought starter was included as a meeting document and served as a basis for discussions. During the Beyond 2020 process (2017-2023), IPEN created a Beyond 2020 vision, outlining the needs a global chemical policy framework should address.
In 2023, IPEN welcomed the creation of the successor to SAICM, the Global Framework on Chemicals (GFC).
Among other priorities, a Global Alliance on Highly Hazardous Pesticides was establsihed through the GFC, with a goal of eliminating HHPs by 2035 (IPEN and the Pesticide Action Network called for such an Allaince in 2015 in this IPEN-PAN letter). In March 2024, UNEA echoed this goal with a resolution on HHPs.
See IPEN's work at the first GFC Open Ended Working Group meeting here.
Other IPEN Resources
The Global Threat from Highly Hazardous Pesticides
Women Leaders: Addressing Chemicals and Waste Issues
Financing the Sound Management of Chemicals
