The Chemicals and Waste Regime as a Basis for a Comprehensive International Framework on Sustainable Management of Potentially Hazardous Materials?

• Date: 01 July 2014
• Published date: 01 July 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/reel.12084
• Author: Katharina Kummer Peiry

The Chemicals and Waste Regime as a Basis for a

Comprehensive International Framework on

Sustainable Management of Potentially

Hazardous Materials?

Katharina Kummer Peiry

Since the 1980s, the international legal framework

governing the management of chemicals and wastes

has developed in an ad hoc and piecemeal fashion. As

the international community became aware of a

problem, the response was to negotiate a treaty to

address it. The 2013 Minamata Convention is the latest

example. The result is an international legal frame-

work that addresses some substances and some

aspects of their management, leaving others unregu-

lated. In today’s globalized world, there is a need for a

coherent and comprehensive legal framework that

reflects the ‘life cycle’ or ‘circular economy’ approach

to materials management. Taking into account previ-

ous efforts, including the 2006 Strategic Approach to

Chemicals Management and the synergies process of

the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions, and

considering the approach adopted by the Minamata

Convention to regulate the upstream as well as the

downstream aspects of the substances it addresses,

this article explores ways to achieve a comprehensive

and coherent global legal framework on the manage-

ment of potentially hazardous materials, concluding

that the current chemicals and waste regime can serve

as a basis for such a framework.

THE EXISTING INTERNATIONAL

LEGAL REGIME ON CHEMICALS

AND WASTES: A PROBLEM-BY

PROBLEM APPROACH

The adoption of Agenda 21 in 1992 was an attempt to

provide an overarching policy instrument for sustain-

able development, including environmental protection

as one of its three pillars. It set out a fairly comprehen-

sive programme for the protection and sustainable

management of all spheres of the global environment.1

Each programme area comprises a basis for action,

objectives, activities and means of implementation.

Chapters 19–21 contain the action programmes for

chemicals and waste management.2These three chap-

ters cover a broad range of substances and actions, and

set out means of implementation of the proposed

actions, including their financing. There has been a

multitude of additional international efforts to provide

policy guidance on chemicals management both before

and after the adoption of Agenda 21.3

While the international non-binding policy framework

has chosen an overarching approach, the body of

binding international environmental treaties adopted

since the 1970s does not follow a systematic approach,

nor are the treaties part of an overarching environ-

mental protection strategy or concept. Rather, once a

particular environmental problem had come to inter-

national public attention, the response was to negoti-

ate a treaty to address it. Accordingly, whether or not

a particular issue is subject to international legal regu-

lation depends largely on whether the issue in ques-

tion at any time posed a widely perceived global threat

that international policy makers considered suffi-

ciently grave to initiate treaty negotiations and to

subsequently invest significant time and resources

over a number of years to bring such negotiations to

conclusion.

The existing chemicals and waste conventions conform

to this pattern.4In addition to the large number of trea-

ties at all levels that directly or indirectly address

1Agenda 21, found in: Report of the UN Conference on Environment

and Development (UN Doc. A/Conf.151/26, 14 June 1992), Chapters

9–22.

2Ibid., Chapters 19–21.

3For an overview, see J. Willis, ‘A Brief Historical Perspective on

International Progress in the Sound Management of Chemicals and

Wastes’, International Institute for Sustainable Development,

Chemicals and Waste Policy and Practice (28 March 2014),

found at: <http://chemicals-l.iisd.org/guest-articles/a-brief-historical

-perspective-on-international-progress-in-the-sound-management-of

-chemicals-and-wastes/>; B. Tuncak and D. Ditz, Paths to Global

Chemical Safety: The 2020 Goal and Beyond (Swedish Society for

Nature Conservation, 2013) (providing a comprehensive analysis of

the relevant legal and policy framework).

4For a more detailed discussion, see K. Kummer Peiry, ‘International

Chemicals and Waste Management’, in: M. Fitzmaurice, D.M. Ong

and P. Merkouris (eds), Research Handbook on International Envi-

ronmental Law (Edward Elgar, 2011), 637.

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Review of European Community & International Environmental Law

RECIEL 23 (2) 2014. ISSN 2050-0386 DOI: 10.1111/reel.12084

© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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