10. Other promising starts: landmark agreements on chemical and biological risks

Creative treaties set the stage for progress

Our list of 10 post-Rio success stories opened with the 1987 Montreal Protocol. In the wake of Montreal have come several other international treaties which, if implemented, offer substantial benefits to people and the environment for generations to come.

Among the most significant is the Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants signed in May 2001 by 91 governments meeting in Stockholm. The so-called POPs are a group of toxic chemicals, principally pesticides and industrial by-products, that have collectively been linked to cancer, damage to the nervous system, reproductive disorders and disruption of the immune system.

The Stockholm Convention targets 12 specific chemicals--the "dirty dozen"--whose production and use is, with a handful of exceptions, to be halted. These include insecticides like DDT and chlordane, as well as polychlorinated biphenols (PCBs), dioxins and furans.

Significantly, the treaty includes a mechanism for adding more substances to the list as the need arises.

Like the Montreal Protocol, the POPs agreement is based on the philosophy of phasing out harmful chemicals and replacing them with benign alternatives, rather than relying on end-of-pipe treatments.

For the treaty to come into force, it must be ratified by at least 50 of the original signatories. At the time of writing, there are hopes that this can happen at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

Another landmark environmental agreement during the post-Rio decade was reached in September 1998, in the form of the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent (PIC). This is designed to protect people and the environment, especially in developing countries, from the risks associated with imported pesticides and other toxic chemicals.

The treaty gives importing countries the power to decide which chemicals they wish to accept and which they do not. It also creates a new duty to label listed chemicals with information about their potential health and environmental effects.

Signatories can make an informed decision about a particular chemical by consulting a "decision guidance document," circulated to all participants. For developing countries, this databank will be particularly valuable.

The treaty deliberately avoids the imposition of blanket bans, and instead passes responsibility to national governments for deciding what chemicals should and should not be traded. Like the Stockholm Convention, it has yet to come into force.

Stockholm and Rotterdam should not be mentioned without also making reference to Cartagena. This Colombian town lends its name to a protocol signed in January 2000.. Though by no means comprehensive, it creates new safeguards to protect the environment from the harmful effects of genetically-engineered organisms.

The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, adopted by the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, focuses on transboundary movements of living modified organisms (LMOs). Among other things, it establishes an "advance informed agreement" (AIA) procedure that requires exporters of certain LMOs to obtain consent from the importer before a shipment can be made.

However, LMOs destined for food, feed or processing (LMO-FFPs) are subject to less stringent controls, on the grounds that they will not--at least not intentionally--be released into the environment. Shipments that "may contain" LMO-FFPs must nevertheless be labelled.

Another feature of the Cartagena Protocol is the creation of an Internet-based "biosafety clearing house" to promote information sharing between nations.

No international agreement is likely to satisfy every point of view, or cover every known risk. Nevertheless, these three treaties represent valuable progress towards a cleaner, safer world. And taken together, they hint at a new era of international cooperation on environmental protection.