The Resolution of the OECD Council on Implementation of the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) was adopted by OECD Council on 28 March 2008 and welcomed by Environment Ministers of OECD countries and major non-member economies at the Environment Ministerial meeting on the 28-29 April 2008 at the OECD Headquarters.
Statement by the Joint Meeting of the Chemicals Committee and Working Party on Chemicals, Pesticides and Biotechnology (endorsed on 1 February 2007)
The OECD Joint Meeting of the Chemicals Committee and Working Party on Chemicals, Pesticides and Biotechnology supports the objectives of the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) as contained in the Dubai Declaration on International Chemicals Management, the Overarching Policy Strategy and the Global Plan of Action, which together set a framework for achieving the Johannnesburg Plan of Implementation 2020 commitment for sound chemicals management (see paragraph 23 of JPOI).
The Joint Meeting responds to the call in the Overarching Policy Strategy for intergovernmental organizations to be involved in addressing the needs identified by SAICM and the objectives it has set, in particular those related to risk reduction, knowledge and information, governance and capacity-building. It considers its Outreach Strategy adopted in 2005 as an important means for doing this.
The Joint Meeting notes that the objectives of the Overarching Policy Strategy for the implementation of the SAICM include numerous areas of activity in which OECD has a long-standing record of work. OECD works on over 40 per cent of the 273 separate activities listed in the Global Plan of Action through its current Programme of Work by OECD, either alone or in co-operation with one or more of the eight other intergovernmental organisations which comprise the Inter-Organization Programme for the Sound Management of Chemicals (IOMC). A detailed stocktaking of how and where these activities fit into implementation of SAICM’s cross-sectoral objectives is being prepared and will soon be made available.
The Joint Meeting has agreed to review its Programme of Work in light of the Overarching Policy Strategy and the Global Plan of Action in relation to the priorities and needs expressed by the SAICM regional meetings, in order to see how its work could be adapted in the future to further incorporate SAICM objectives and how OECD, in concert with its IOMC partners, can best work to further the implementation of SAICM worldwide. In the interim the Joint Meeting commits itself to make available and accessible to all countries and other stakeholders in the world, the instruments and processes it has developed over the past several decades for the sound management of chemicals in OECD member countries (e.g. Guidelines for the Testing of Chemicals, Application Toolbox for Quantitative Structure Activity Relationships, the eChemicals Portal for hazard data, etc.).
Finally, the Joint Meeting encourages its member countries and those non-member countries and stakeholder partners with whom it works to strengthen their contributions to the sound management of chemicals through their own frameworks as well in OECD.
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