Clandestine chemicals, degraded drylands.

Some 110 Governments attending the ninth Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer agreed on 17 September to tighten restrictions on several destructive chemicals.

The Meeting, held in Montreal, Canada, agreed a phase-out schedule for methyl bromide, a fumigant that until today was the most important ozone-depleting substance whose phase out by developing countries had not yet been established. It also set up a licensing system to help Governments track international trade in chloro-fluorocarbon (CFCs) and other controlled substances, and discourage illegal sales.

Under the methyl bromide agreement, the phase out by developed countries, previously set at year 2010, has been moved up to 2005 with exemptions for "critical uses". Developing countries, previously committed only to a freeze by 2002, have agreed to a 20 per cent reduction by 2005 and a phase out by 2015.

In addition to the $10 million agreed last year for funding, demonstration projects testing the feasibility of methyl bromide alternatives, the Multilateral Fund will make available $25 million per year in 1998 and 1999 for activities to phase out methyl bromide in developing countries. Starting one year after the agreement enters into force, parties will ban trade in methyl bromide with non-parties.

Another decision adopted by the Meeting requests developed countries to consider banning the sale of their stockpiles of virgin CFCs anywhere in the world, except for meeting the "basic domestic needs" of developing countries or for exempted "essential uses". This is important for preventing these stocks from entering the black market.

Proposals by the European Community and Switzerland to accelerate the phase out of the consumption of HCFCs and introduce production control were not accepted. These countries made a declaration urging that the issue be revisited at a future meeting.

Some weeks later, on 10 October, Ministers and other senior officials from 122 Governments concluded a two-week meeting in Rome on the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, with a far-reaching overhaul of international support to local and national efforts to return the world's drylands to economic and environmental health.

The core of the new approach is the establishment of a "Global Mechanism" for promoting and rationalizing the transfer of financial and technological assistance. This Mechanism is mandated to assure that every country that needs international support has full access to information about multilateral and bilateral sources. In this way, it will act as a catalyst to improve coordination, minimize overlaps and share information, ideas and success stories.

The Parties to the Convention agreed to invite the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) to house the Mechanism. Other organizations, including UNDP/IFAD, the World Bank and the African, Asian and Inter-American Regional Development Banks will collaborate actively with it to ensure that the Mechanism achieves its central aim of giving the people of the drylands the tools they need to help themselves.

The meeting also finalized arrangements for another institutional pillar of the Convention. Until now, the Convention process has been supported by an ad hoc, or interim, secretariat located in Geneva. Governments agreed by consensus to establish a permanent secretariat on the foundations of the existing interim secretariat to locate it in Bonn, Germany, where it will share premises with the secretariats of the climate change and migratory species treaties. The German Government had offered to support the secretariat and Convention-related events indefinitely with an extra $1.3 million per year. The move to Bonn is likely to take place by early 1999.