The Rotterdam Convention provides information about chemicals that have been banned or severely restricted for health or environmental reasons by some countries. The information empowers countries to refuse the import of these chemicals, or to accept these chemicals with information about how to safely manage them under the Convention’s prior informed consent (PIC) procedure.

The Convention’s Chemical Review Committee has an important task to identify those chemicals that could be listed in the Convention and to gather the relevant information for parties.

The CRC does not review the properties of the chemicals themselves, but rather it reviews countries’ notifications that they have taken final regulatory action to severely restrict a chemical. The notifications must meet several criteria set out by the Convention, including that there was a risk assessment conducted based on how the substance is used in the country. If two countries from two different “PIC” regions put forward nominations that meet the criteria, then the CRC recommends it for listing in the Convention.

CRC-20 met at a time when there are lively debates on the effectiveness of the Rotterdam Convention. The Conference of the Parties has been unable to agree to list several chemicals suggested by the CRC. Most of these substances are pesticides.

CRC-20 might have been the busiest meeting in the modern history of the Committee. Traditionally, the workload of the CRC is relatively light. There may be few nominations submitted or few that preliminary review deemed to meet the criteria. CRC-20 had 33 notifications to review (the full list can be found here). Nearly all were pesticides. Ten notifications related to paraquat, a pesticide the CRC has already recommended listing in the Convention, but parties have not been able to agree to do so.

There were a further four severely hazardous pesticide formulations. Nominating this type of formulation is another route open only to developing countries to bring forward concerns about a pesticide mixture, whether or not they, or another country, has taken final regulatory action against it.

The Committee finalized its recommendations as well as the draft decision guidance documents on chlorpyrifos and mercury, and is expected to forward this work to the next meeting of the Conference of the Parties in 2025.

CRC-20 convened at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, Italy, from 17–20 September 2024.

The Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) writers for this meeting were Jennifer Allan, Ph.D.; and Anna Dubrova. The Editor was Pam Chasek, Ph.D.