Global Governance of Hazardous Chemicals: Challenges of Multilevel Management

8 Multilevel Governance and Chemicals Management: Past, Present, and Future

8 Multilevel Governance and Chemicals Management: Past, Present, and Future Improving the management of hazardous chemicals is an important sustainable development issue. Although some progress toward chemicals safety can be noted, many chemicals continue to pose unacceptable environmental and human health risks. This chapter analyzes multilevel governance issues as they relate to the creation and future of the chemicals regime. The chapter begins by summarizing the main components of the chemicals regime. It then returns to the three research questions posed in chapter 1, focusing on issues of coalitions, diffusion, and effectiveness . Next, the chapter discusses four multilevel governance challenges critical for increasing regime effectiveness and environmental and human health protection. The chapter ends with a few remarks regarding some of the major lessons that the chemicals case offers other governance efforts with respect to characters and implications of institutional linkages for strengthening multilevel governance. The Chemicals Regime The chemicals regime, created over several decades to mitigate harm to human health and the environment, focuses on global, regional, national, and local aspects of the chemicals problem. The treaties and programs that constitute the core of the regime address the transboundary transport of emissions and the international trade in hazardous chemicals and wastes, as well as domestic management challenges. These cross-scale issues are, of course, intimately linked: frequent long-range transport of emissions and extensive trade in chemicals and wastes add to significant local contamination and management problems across the world. The main chemicals treaties and programs assign states a shared responsibil- 164 Chapter 8 ity to ensure that domestic activities do not cause damage to other states or areas outside national jurisdiction. This creates a legal foundation for addressing a wide range of chemicals issues and their associated management problems across governance scales. While all countries face important management challenges, the chemicals regime recognizes the particular problems of developing countries and countries with economies in transition. The two POPs treaties also explicitly identify the vulnerability of Arctic ecosystems and indigenous communities from the contamination of toxic, persistent, and bioaccumulating chemicals. Several principles and norms are guiding policy making and management, including the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. Based on this principle, for example, developing countries and countries with economies in transition are given more time to phase out the use of regulated chemicals and deal with contaminated equipment . Furthermore, treaties stipulate that industrialized countries have a responsibility to help developing countries and countries with economies in transition to develop their domestic management capacities through financial and technical assistance. The chemicals treaties acknowledge the importance of precaution in guiding collective policy making and regulation, although the practical implications of applying the precautionary principle for risk assessment and management are frequently contested. The polluter-pays principle is included in the Stockholm Convention, giving legal recognition to the notion that the polluter should, in principle, bear the primary cost of mitigating pollution. For the parts of the regime that address the trade in commercial chemicals and wastes, the PIC principle has been established as a core legal principle identifying states’ rights and responsibilities . Under the PIC schemes, a regulated chemical or waste cannot be exported from one country to another without the explicit consent of the importing state. At the same time, treaties stipulate that regulatory actions should not distort international trade and investment by discriminating against particular states or products. The principles of common but differentiated responsibilities, precaution , polluter pays, and PIC are connected to norms on how to best manage hazardous chemicals. Since the 1960s, international cooperation has been expanded based on a belief shared by leading IGO, states, and NGOs that effectively managing the international trade in chemicals and Multilevel Governance and Chemicals Management 165 wastes as well as reducing transboundary transport of emissions requires extensive political, technical, and scientific collaboration. Chemicals treaties also contain much normative language about the importance of the transfer of technology and other resources to developing countries and countries with economies in transition. As a result, there is a strong normative commitment to collectively deal with hazardous chemicals from global to local levels. Many treaty commitments to support regional and domestic capacity building are, however, formulated in rather weak language , putting few mandatory requirements on countries. Based on the principles and norms guiding international cooperation and problem solving, the different treaties that constitute the core of the regime introduce life cycle regulations of a small set of hazardous chemicals , covering their...