The Rotterdam Convention

In one line

Adopted at Rotterdam in September 1998, it applies prior informed consent to a chemical in trade rather than to a shipment of waste, listing banned or severely restricted chemicals and severely hazardous pesticide formulations in Annex III and giving every importing State the right to say no, subject to no obligation to say yes.

The problem it solves

A pesticide banned in the country that makes it is still lawful to sell abroad. That is the Bichhri fact pattern and the Bamako article 2(1)(d) fact pattern, and it is a gap Basel cannot fill, because Basel governs waste and this is a product.

Two voluntary schemes had grown up: the UNEP Amended London Guidelines for the exchange of information on chemicals in international trade, and the FAO International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides. They operated a voluntary prior informed consent procedure. The Convention converted it into a treaty obligation.

Objective and scope

Article 1. The objective is to promote shared responsibility and cooperative efforts among parties in the international trade of certain hazardous chemicals, in order to protect human health and the environment from potential harm and contribute to their environmentally sound use, by facilitating information exchange about their characteristics, by providing for a national decision-making process on their import and export, and by disseminating those decisions to parties.

Read the objective carefully. It is a procedural objective, not a substantive one. The Convention does not ban anything. It ensures that an importing State knows what a chemical is and can decide.

Article 3(1), what is covered. Banned or severely restricted chemicals, and severely hazardous pesticide formulations.

Article 3(2), what is not. Narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances; radioactive materials; wastes; chemical weapons; pharmaceuticals including veterinary drugs; chemicals used as food additives; food; and chemicals in quantities not likely to affect health or the environment imported for research or analysis or by an individual for personal use in reasonable quantities.

Wastes are excluded because Basel has them. The two conventions are complementary by design, and saying so is worth a mark.

Designated national authorities, article 4

Each party must designate one or more national authorities authorised to act on its behalf in performing the administrative functions the Convention requires, must seek to ensure that they have sufficient resources to perform their tasks effectively, and must notify their name and address to the Secretariat no later than the date the Convention enters into force for it, notifying any change forthwith. The Secretariat must inform the parties of the notifications it receives.

The resources clause is unusual and worth noticing. Most treaties require a State to nominate a contact point. This one asks it to fund the office, because the whole procedure fails if the designated national authority cannot answer within nine months.