Towards an Intergovernmental Panel on Chemical Pollution (IPCP)

摘要

At scientific conferences on the environmental fate and distribution of organic chemicals we often state that more political and financial support would be desirable, in particular in the areas of emission inventories, chemical property determination, long-term environmental monitoring, and modeling. At the Dioxin 2004 conference in Berlin I posed the question if we cannot increase the support of research into transboundary chemical pollution by establishing an Intergovernmental Panel on Chemical Pollution - IPCP (Thoughts on the Cold Condensation and Global Fractionation of Persistent Organic Pollutants, Plenary lecture at the Dioxin 2004 Conference, Berlin, 9 September 2004). To some extent, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, can serve as a model for such a Panel on Chemical Pollution. The IPCC was established in 1988 by WMO and UNEP "to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation" (IPCC, 2005). What is important here is that the IPCC has been successful in two respects: it provides thoroughly evaluated and compiled scientific information and it has become an influential political actor.