With the final stages of the negotiations over the above Convention coming up in the near future, the issue of how pollutant release and transfer registers (PRTRs) will be dealt with in the new Convention has yet to be resolved. The purpose of this letter is to urge you to support the strengthening of the current text relating to PRTRs on the basis that this should be an integral part of the Convention.

The merits of PRTRs

PRTRs benefit citizens, workers, Governments, industry and the environment.

It is now ten years since the first US "Toxics Release Inventory" (TRI, the US system of PRTR) was compiled, and the data has had an extraordinary impact. US industry has responded with pollution reduction programmes and many industrialists have seen that the inventory has created an opportunity to increase efficiency. To quote two large companies:

"[TRI] opened up our industry to greater public view, and that has been healthy. We believe it will help accelerate the waste-reduction mentality throughout industry..." - John Harrison, Dow Chemicals,Texas.

And the US programme is expanding - the number of chemicals reported has doubled to over 600, and the number of sectors included is being extended.

President Clinton has said of the TRI:

"... since the Community Right to Know Act has been on the books, reported reductions in toxic emissions are about 43 per cent for the whole country. Now that's a law worth passing. No new bureaucracy; just power to the people through basic knowledge. This has kept millions of pounds of chemicals out of our lives. It's helped people to stay healthy and live longer... it's also helped to spur innovation to help businesses work smarter and cleaner and become more profitable, not less profitable".

Chemical reduction programmes must generate wide involvement to ensure constant evaluation and monitoring, leading to progress towards more efficient production techniques and the use of fewer or no toxic substances. Moreover, empowering citizens and communities with information enables them to monitor their neighbourhood polluters, and takes some of the regulatory burden off the resource-strapped authorities.

Encouraged by Agenda 21, other countries have initiated or built on earlier pollution inventories to provide public, standardised data. They include Mexico, Canada, England and Wales, the Netherlands and Australia.

It has been estimated that establishing an inventory for 1200 facilities reporting an average of 8 chemicals each (the US average has been 4) could be undertaken with just two computers and approximately 5 person-years of work per year (World Wide Fund for Nature). (The total list of reportable chemicals would be far bigger but of course not all facilities will use all chemicals.)

Why PRTRs should be addressed in the Convention

Most if not all of the governments which are party to the negotiations have recognised to a greater or lesser extent the merits of PRTR-type systems - as reflected in their participation in the relevant processes within the OECD and/or the Inter-Organisational Programme for Sound Management of Chemicals (IOMC) established by UNEP, ILO, WHO, FAO, OECD, UNIDO and others. However, some have doubts about whether this issue should be dealt with in the new Convention. Others believe it should not be dealt with in binding language.

In our view, a Convention, which mainly limits the scope of its information provisions to information held by public authorities and fails to address the question of whether or how public access to information held in the corporate sector will be provided would be fundamentally flawed. In this respect, the deletion at the 8th session of the Working Group of a draft provision requiring that information which public authorities are entitled to inspect, but do not hold, be publicly accessible on the same terms as information which they do hold (3.6 of document CEP/AC.3/R.5) is a matter of grave concern to us and increases further our conviction that the Convention should establish concrete procedures to ensure the flow of environmental information from the private sector into the public domain.

Similarly, to deal with information held by public authorities in binding provisions and only deal with information held by the corporate sector in recommendatory language would create a philosophical imbalance in the Convention, opening up the risk that the real levels of public access to environmental information depend on a factor over which the Convention exercises no control, i.e. the extent to which environmental information held by the corporate sector is made publicly available.

Finally, recognising that not all aspects of this issue can be resolved before the Århus conference, we are in favour of a commitment in the Convention to developing a Protocol on PRTRs. Vague language requiring parties to merely 'consider what steps are necessary' at the first meeting of the Parties will give little reassurance that this crucial issue is being taken seriously.

Conclusion

Taking into account the merits of PRTRs, the fact that they can be established with modest means and the logic of addressing them within the framework of this Convention, we urge your Government to demonstrate a strong commitment to PRTRs at the next negotiating session of the Convention.

Yours faithfully,
Mara Silina
Friends of the Earth Europe

also on behalf of:
Lisa Finaldi
Toxics Campaign
Greenpeace International

Dr. Sian Pullen
Chair, WorldWide Fund for Nature (WWF)
North East Atlantic Programme

John Hontelez
Secretary-General
European Environmental Bureau

Annex 1: Extract from ECO Declaration on the Convention, November 1997

Delegates from ECOs from the UN ECE region recently met at Lake Bled, Slovenia, and agreed:

"8. It is essential that the Convention contains a clear obligation on Parties to introduce national Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers (PRTRs) as a means of giving citizens access to critical information held by the private sector. PRTRs benefit Governments, industry, workers, citizens and the environment. Weak, non-binding language on this issue will leave a major gap in the effectiveness of the Convention.

"9. In recognition of the growing use of electronic means of information exchange we demand that certain important categories of environmental information be legally required to be made accessible through the Internet or its equivalent. This requirement would save officials from the burden of responding to many individual requests at the same time that it allows the public to instantaneous access to a large amount of information and, emphatically, is cost effective. Failure to set clear and concrete targets in this area will be a failure of Parties to use new information tools to accomplish the Convention's goals."

--------------------------

Article 4

[DUTIES WITH RESPECT TO] ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION

[9. Each Party shall progressively establish, taking into account international processes where appropriate, a national system for a pollution inventory or register on a structured computerised and publicly

accessible database compiled through standardised reporting forms. Such a system should include inputs, releases and transfers of a specified range of substances and products, including water, energy and resource use, from a specified range of activities to environmental media and to on-site and off-site treatment and disposal sites.]

Article 10.2

2. At their meetings, the Parties shall keep under continuous review the implementation of this Convention [on the basis of regular reporting by the Parties], and, with this purpose in mind, shall:

(a) ... (h)...

[(i) At their first meeting, start the preparation of a protocol to this Convention in order to establish national pollutant release and transfer registers. Such registers could contain information to be:

(i) Maintained through periodic reporting, on a mandatory basis, of releases and transfers from a specified range of activities to air, water, land, off-site treatment and disposal and the product stream of a specified

range of chemicals; and

(ii) Compiled through a standardised reporting form that serves as a basis for a structured computer database to aggregate data by chemical, region, sector, company and facility.]

The Working Group also decided at the 7th session to insert in article 10, paragraph 2:

(j) At their first meeting, review experience of Parties in implementing the provisions of article 4, paragraph

9, and consider what steps are necessary to develop further the system referred to in that provision, taking into account international processes and developments."

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