E-news No. 2 (updated 31.10.02)
Dear colleagues,
Let me first welcome Portugal to the regional activities. We hope you will find them
helpful for your chemical safety work.
As a follow-up to e-news No. 2, please find enclosed the following documents I, II and III:
I. WEOG work plans for 2002 and 2003. (This document also contains information on
the main activities being planned for Forum IV to be held in Bangkok 2-7 November
2003.)
II. Background on the process to develop by 2005 a Strategic approach to international
chemicals management, see also http://www.chem.unep.ch/irptc/strategy/default.htm.
(Main issues would be :
- identifying present implementation of the Priorities for Action from Forum III
- identifying gaps in the Priorities for Action
- suggesting new priorities to improve implementation and fill the gaps
- find funding for the estimated budget of around 5 million USD
- coordination with IFCS activities including relation Forum Standing
Committee vs. Strategy Steering Committee, and the use of Forum IV as a launching
point for broader consultations ; the formal character of a Preparatory Committee may
be difficult to reconcile with the schedule of Forum IV since formalities are likely to take
up a lot of time ; a Bureau established by the first Prepcom might solve the coordination
issues but this will at the earliest be established a year from now.)
III. Rev. 11 of the Decision document and its associated Annex on Priority for Action A3
Hazard data generation and availability. (The most contentious issue appears to be
whether a minimum set of hazrad data should be generated for all chemicals, not only
high production volume chemicals. You find this discussed in the decision document at
the bottom of the second page, curled bracket 1 : " Encourage governments and industry
world-wide to make all existing information relevant to hazard identification publicly
available and used according to established procedures, and to adopt the OECD SIDS
as a minimum set of hazard data for chemicals of potential concern to be applied with
flexibility" )
For your reference, the original email is reproduced below.
Welcome to an intense Regional meeting !
Gunnar Bengtsson
Vice-President WEOG
E-news No. 2 (original 02.10.02)
Dear colleagues,
This is the second of three planned e-news from IFCS WEOG during 2002.
Information on IFCS can be found on http://www.who.int/ifcs including regional
information and follow-up of the Priorities for Action from 2000.
You are invited to a one-hour regional meeting of the WEOG group of the IFCS during
the lunch-break of the OECD Joint Meeting. The time would be about 1230 to 1330 on
Thursday 7 November and the place the OECD headquarters in Paris. You will towards
the end of October receive three background documents:
I. WEOG work plans for 2002 and 2003
II. Collection of arguments on how IFCS can contribute to develop a strategic approach
to international chemicals management
III. Rev 11 of report from Working Group on Priority for Action A3 Hazard data
generation and managment
A. ELECTIONS
In the evaluation of the previous meeting it was proposed that the administrative items
would be kept rather short and instead most of the time devoted to a factual issue. There
is however one administrative issue we must deal with: Preparing elections of
representatives to the FSC. At present the following are elected:
Vice-President Sweden
Regional representatives: Germany, USA, Australia
In addition, the region has representation through the immediate past president,
Canada.
The representatives are expected to promote the IFCS and participate in the activities
including about one face-to-face meeting per year. My own time allocation has been
about 3 working weeks/year for the FSC in general and about one additional week for
the specific Vice Presidency tasks. My institution has provided travelling money of
around 3000 euro/USD per year and some office services.
B. FACTUAL ISSUE 1: How can WEOG can contribute to develop a strategic approach
to international chemicals management?
Chemical safety has been given a boost by the Plan of Implementation from the World
Summit of Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, see
http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/ The key statements say: "Renew the commitment,
as advanced in Agenda 21, to sound management of chemicals throughout their life
cycle and of hazardous wastes for sustainable development and for the protection of
human health and the environment, inter alia, aiming to achieve by 2020 that chemicals
are used and produced in ways that lead to the minimization of significant adverse
effects on human health and the environment, using transparent science-based risk
assessment procedures and science-based risk management procedures...", and
"Further develop a strategic approach to international chemicals management based on
the Bahia Declaration and Priorities for Action beyond 2000 of the Intergovernmental
Forum on Chemical Safety (IFCS) by 2005..."
The IFCS Standing Committee is dialoguing with UNEP on how we can influence the
process. A collection of arguments is being compiled and will be distributed to you
before the WEOG meeting as a basis for discussions.
C.FACTUAL ISSUE 2: the progress report of the Working Group A3 on " Hazard data
generation and availability " .
Implementing the Priorities for Action are already part of the existing global strategy. You
can follow the work on http://www.who.int/ifcs/fsc/FSCworkProgramme.html . One
Priority that may be worthy of discussion now is A3 "Hazard data generation and
availability", for which the eleventh draft will be available the week before the WEOG
meeting. It will also be sent to you as soon as it becomes available, to be discussed by
the Forum Standing Committee FSC in the end of November. The draft is quite mature,
and the timing seems to be very good for providing broader input to the FSC
discussions.
D. OTHER ITEMS
You will find more details and a proposed agenda appended below
Finally some "good housekeeping" issues:
1. The IFCS questionnaire on Indicators of progress has only been returned by less
than half of WEOG countries - please make sure your country contributes.
2. Funding of IFCS is always urgent - please show your appreciation, website
http://www.who.int/ifcs/finance/partnerships.html
I would appreciate some reactions in advance on how we allot the scarce time to the
factual issues.
I hope to see you at the Paris meeting
Gunnar Bengtsson
Vice-President WEOG
CELL PHONE +4670 767 88 96