Designed for Purpose? Negotiations on a New Science-Policy Panel for Chemicals and Waste

This event will be Hybrid (in person and Zoom)

In 2022, the UN Environment Assembly called for negotiations to establish a science-policy panel to “contribute further to the sound management of chemicals and waste and prevent pollution.” It is envisioned as a new sibling science panel to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The comparisons with the IPCC and IPBES are tempting, and at times instructive. However, the new panel will face three sets of challenges that, together, are unique to chemicals and waste knowledge and politics. First, the issue itself. Chemicals and waste issues represent a huge scope of challenges, with their own production and consumption patterns and technical implications. Prioritization is a must and will be deeply political. Second, data and knowledge are unequally distributed and shared. The differences between the amount of data generated and held in the Global North versus the Global South is vast. Indigenous voices are rarely incorporated into such accounts. Data is also often privately held. The private sector may have to share some information with EU REACH, but little with other regulators or public academic institutions. Those most affected by chemicals and waste pollution may be the least able to bring their concerns to the panel. Third, efforts to govern chemicals and wastes present further challenges. There is no global chemicals treaty, but rather a relatively small collection of discrete agreements, many of which have narrow mandates. The issue receives little attention or funding globally, mirroring the situation within many countries. For the panel to be policy-relevant, it needs to find a willing recipient of its reports with the capacity to act upon them.

Dr Jennifer Allan is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Cardiff University. Her research explores environmental and social movements, and how global rules are made and remade. Recent work focuses on the politics of sustainable post-COVID recoveries, including green stimulus packages in the UK and the emergence of the green recovery norm globally. She engages with a wide range of environmental issues, including climate change, biodiversity, forest protection, and chemical and wastes management. She received my PhD from the University of British Columbia in May 2017.

Through contributing to the Earth Negotiations Bulletin – the de facto record of global environmental negotiations, she has attended roughly 40 UN conferences where states negotiate the rules of global climate governance, as well as chemicals and wastes management, and has published over 100 Bulletins with her ENB colleagues.