Twentieth meeting of the Chemical Review Committee (CRC.20)

Rome, Italy, 17-20 September 2024

Venue: FAO Headquarters, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00153 Rome, Italy.

Overview

The twentieth meeting of the Chemical Review Committee of the Rotterdam Convention will take place from 17 to 20 September 2024, back to back with the twentieth meeting of the Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee of the Stockholm Convention. Pre-meetings of the intersessional task groups will be held on 16 September 2024.

At its twentieth meeting, the Committee will consider draft decision guidance documents for chlorpyrifos and mercury. The Committee recommended listing these two chemicals in Annex III to the Convention at its nineteenth meeting.

The Committee is additionally scheduled to review up to 33 notifications of final regulatory action in accordance with the criteria set out in Annex II to the Convention and four proposals for listing severely hazardous pesticide formulations in accordance with the criteria set out in part 3 of Annex IV to the Convention, as listed the below. The Committee will also continue reviewing notifications of final regulatory action on carbaryl, chlorfenvinphos, ethion, methidathion and thiodicarb, discussed during the nineteenth meeting but consideration of which was not complete at that meeting.

New notifications of final regulatory action scheduled for review by the Committee at its twentieth meeting

Severely hazardous pesticide formulations proposals scheduled for review by the Committee at its twentieth meeting

Given the high workload with a large number of notifications in front of the Committee and in light of the time available, the Bureau of the Chemical Review Committee decided that other notifications of final regulatory action awaiting review by the Committee would be considered at a future meeting. In line with the procedure for dealing with notifications of final regulatory action to ban or severely restrict a chemical (section 1.6 of the Handbook of working procedures and policy guidance for the Chemical Review Committee), the Bureau additionally decided to prioritize consideration of chemicals that would undergo intersessional work prior to the twentieth meeting of the Committee. Thus, a number of notifications that according to the preliminary review undertaken by the Secretariat and the Bureau appear to not meet the criteria of Annex II to the Convention, would not undergo intersessional work but would be considered directly by the Committee at its twentieth meeting. Further information about the intersessional work and related meeting documents will be provided shortly.