Paraquat at the Rotterdam Convention

The Chemical Review Committee (CRC) of the Rotterdam Convention¹ reviewed the amended notification from Sweden at its meeting in Geneva in March 2010. The Committee agreed that the notification did not meet the specified requirements. Accordingly, and as earlier notifications from other countries did not meet the criteria either, paraquat as a substance was not put forward in the process to include it in the list of chemicals subject to the Prior Informed Consent procedure.

A proposal from Burkina Faso to list Gramoxone® Super as a Severely Hazardous Pesticide Formulation (SHPF) was reviewed by the CRC at the end of March 2011. The CRC concluded that the relatively soft criteria for a SHPF were met. The Conference of the Parties will take the listing decision in 2013. Syngenta does not agree with the listing recommendation as the underlying information from Burkina Faso, a retrospective survey on poisoning incidents, did not demonstrate that the definition of a SHPF according to the Convention text was met. The CRC did not discuss that fact. In addition, the robustness of the data was doubtful, the significance of the number of incidents in relation to the volume sold was not demonstrated, and the applicability of the Rotterdam Convention on illegal trade was left open.

The Rotterdam Convention was drawn-up by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) with the aim of promoting shared responsibility and cooperative efforts among Parties (nations which ratified the Convention) in the international trade of certain types of chemicals in order to protect human health and the environment².

Parties to the Rotterdam Convention are obliged to notify the Secretariat of any final regulatory action to ban or severely restrict pesticides or industrial chemicals in order to protect human health or the environment. If at least two notifications from at least two regions meet all required criteria, the Chemical Review Committee decides whether the chemical is recommended to the Conference of the Parties (COP) to be made subject to the legally-binding Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure. If so, the Committee prepares a “Decision Guidance Document”. The decision to PIC list a chemical is eventually taken by the COP by consensus.

Likewise, a country with an economy in development or transition can propose to list a formulation, with which it experiences problems, as a SHPF.

Parties to the Convention must decide and communicate to the Secretariat whether they will allow or restrict imports of PIC listed chemicals in future. Parties must then ensure that their exporters comply with those decisions.

Paraquat as a substance or in a formulation (SHPF) is currently not included in the PIC list³.

References

1. The Rotterdam Convention website http://www.pic.int
2. Text of the Rotterdam Convention http://www.pic.int/Itorc/RC_text.pdf
3. The PIC list of chemicals can be found at http://www.pic.int/home.php?type=t&id=29&sid=30