Hazardous chemicals convention

The 1998 Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade, which came into force in 2004, commits exporters of chemicals banned in their own countries because of their human or environmental toxicity to notify importers of this through a Prior Informed Consent procedure (PIC). The Convention made legally-binding Article 9 of the voluntary FAO’s 1986 International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides, inspired by the tragedy of the 1984 Bhopal chemical plant disaster. The establishment of PIC as a binding international rule was sealed by eventually gaining the support of the chemical industry in the early 1990s, after they had opposed its inclusion even in the voluntary code, after a civil society campaign led by the Pesticides Action Network. The reason for this “U-turn” by the industry was a fear of the alternatives, such as an outright prohibition of the export of certain pesticides, a bill of which was debated in the United States during 1991-1992.