Toward a New Foreign Policy.

Rapid U.S. ratification of the Stockholm and Rotterdam conventions will spur other nations to join in meeting the goal of ratification by 50 countries before September 2002. The U.S. played a key role in initiating the international discussions that ultimately led to the Stockholm Convention, and it would be fitting for Washington to play a leadership role in ensuring that the toxics treaty is ratified.

If the treaties are to successfully traverse the required U.S. legislative procedures by the end of this year, the Bush administration and the Senate leadership must make a serious and immediate commitment to ratifying both conventions. President Bush and the State Department made a public commitment in April to move forward rapidly with ratification of the Stockholm Convention; several Senate offices have indicated interest in rapidly ratifying the treaty as well, and they are open to inclusion of the Rotterdam Convention in the ratification process. The NGO community will be tracking progress toward ratification with great interest and cautious optimism.

The first step to be taken by national governments under the Stockholm Convention will be the development of national implementation plans outlining how each country will meet the treaty objectives. Many countries are initiating national implementation plans even before the convention comes into force; in developing countries, these early efforts are supported by interim funding for convention implementation through the Global Environment Facility. In order to demonstrate a commitment to treaty implementation and to move forward with the treaty objectives, the U.S. should immediately initiate development of a national implementation plan.

The primary focus of a U.S. national implementation plan should involve moving toward the elimination of POPs byproducts. Dioxins and furans pose a tremendous health risk, and strategies that support their elimination are strongly opposed by representatives of the chlorine and incineration industries. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected to release a dioxin reassessment in the coming months, and this document could potentially form the cornerstone of the U.S. national implementation plan. The report, however, has been plagued by years of controversy and delay.

Public interest groups tracking the EPA's work reviewing dioxins assert that the agency's analysis is based on methods inferior to new analytical tools developed in Europe for long-term monitoring of dioxins. The EPA's recommendations are expected to focus on end-of-the-pipe controls and minimization rather than the materials-substitution policies mandated by the Stockholm Convention. In addition, the EPA is not likely to recommend a phaseout of incineration, a major source of dioxin contaminants in the United States. An effective U.S. national implementation plan must overcome these shortcomings and develop an aggressive strategy to reduce and eliminate U.S. dioxin emissions.

The EPA's recommendations regarding dioxins will also influence the national implementation plans of Canada and Mexico. Joint efforts to manage chemicals under the environmental side-agreement to the North America Free Trade Agreement have already resulted in regional action plans regulating DDT, PCBs, and chlordane, and discussions are now shifting to dioxins and furans. These efforts are likely to be directly incorporated into national implementation plans for the three countries and should reflect the progressive approach to dioxin elimination stipulated by the Stockholm Convention.

The other critical component of a U.S. national implementation plan is a strategy for evaluating use and gradual elimination of persistent chemicals not yet listed under the Stockholm Convention. A number of states such as Washington, California, and states in the Great Lakes region are pursuing efforts to address the problem of ongoing use of persistent bioaccumulative toxins. Progress underway through these state-level initiatives can help the U.S. move toward national evaluation, reduction, and eventual elimination of persistent pollutants.

In his Earth Day-linked announcement of support for the Stockholm Convention, President Bush reminded the country that "the risks are great, and the need for action is clear." In this spirit, the Bush administration must move forward rapidly and in good faith to include under the convention persistent chemicals that are still in use domestically. If such action is not taken, Washington will earn the unfortunate reputation on the international stage of supporting (with great fanfare) global treaties that require relatively little of the U.S. but spurning agreements--like the Kyoto Protocol--that require more substantive domestic action.

Key Recommendations

* The U.S. Senate should ratify both the Stockholm and Rotterdam conventions by December 2001.

* The U.S. should develop a national implementation plan under the Stockholm Convention, focusing particularly on the elimination of dioxin emissions.

* The U.S. should gradually phase out domestic production and use of additional persistent chemicals that qualify as POPs under the Stockholm Convention's criteria. Washington should provide leadership by proposing the addition of these chemicals under the convention.

Kristin S. Schafer <[e-mail]>, Program Coordinator with Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA), is coauthor of Nowhere to Hide: Persistent Toxic Chemicals in the U.S. Food Supply (PANNA, 2001). She coordinates PANNA's POPs Elimination program and cofacilitates the IPEN working group on pesticides.