Spring 2001
Global RTK-Growing
The International Campaign for Responsible Technology’s (ICRT) drive for a Global Chemical Right-to-Know (RTK) agreement advanced in February 2001 with the beginning of formal negotiations over the shape of a future United Nations Pollution Release and Transfer Register (PRTR) Protocol. The proposed protocol would create a model register for European and Asian nations participating in the Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making, and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters— also known as the Aarhus Convention. As Right-to-Know activists envision the agreement, an international registry would document pollutant releases from factories, measure water and energy resources, and track both on-site and off-site transfer of waste from production. All information would be made available to the public within six months of its collection by participating governments.
“The setting of factory pollution reduction targets and tracking the release of genetically modified organisms might also be built into the system of PRTR registers. However, these elements raised controversy among some governments,” said SVTC staff Michael Stanley-Jones. Michael represented SVTC and the IHEAL Network at the first round negotiations between European and Asian governments and NGOs, in Geneva, Switzerland, February 28-March 2, 2001. (IHEAL, co-founded by the ICRT, is a group working on public access to information and works closely with ECO Forum, a coalition of more than 140 NGOs from Asia, Europe and North America working to obtain public rights to access, participation and justice under the Aarhus Convention.)
Other nations would also be eligible to sign the Chemical Right-to-Know Protocol. “We want the framework for the Protocol to be in place in time for presentation at the Earth Summit Rio+10 in South Africa in 2002,” said Stanley-Jones. 100 nations called for establishing national pollution registers in Agenda 21 at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
Momentum for national pollutant registers is growing on this side of the Atlantic as well. Following the recent meeting of the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation, Right-To-Know advocates from Canada and the United States joined Mexican environmental organizations and called for public access to Mexico’s new Pollutant Release and Transfer Registry. RTK advocates are insisting the Mexican Ministry of Environmental Protection set a firm timetable for release of pollutant release information and work with them on disseminating the information .“For our part, we commit ourselves to continue working in favor of the construction of comparable registries for North America and offer all the support that is necessary to work jointly in the consolidation of the Mexican PRTR, ”says Martha Delgado of the NGO Mexican Citizen Presence. The Environment Ministry Canada is also working with the Chilean government on development of a Chilean national pollutant registry, the first in South America.
Michael Stanley-Jones is SVTC Sustainable Water Program Manager
Want more info? Contact Michael Stanley-Jones (msjones@svtc.org) or Mary Taylor, co-coordinator of ECO Forum Public Participation Campaigns Committee (maryt@foe.co.uk). Contact Martha Delgado at Presencia Ciudadana Mexicana, A.C., Zacatecas 206-PH, Col. Rome, CP. 06700, Mexico, D.F., or by email: presenci@prodigy.net.mx, www.presenciaciudadana.org.mx
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