The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer

The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was adopted on 16 September 1987 at the Headquarters of the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal. The Protocol came into force on 1st January 1989, when it was ratified by 29 countries and the EEC. Since then several other countries have ratified it.

The Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade

The Rotterdam Convention is a multilateral environmental agreement designed to promote shared responsibility and cooperative efforts among Parties in the international trade of certain hazardous chemicals, in order to protect human health and the environment from potential harm and to contribute to their environmentally sound use by facilitating information exchange about their characteristics, providing for a national decision-making process on their import and export and disseminating these decisions to Parties.

The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal

The Basel Convention was adopted on 22 March 1989 by the Conference of Plenipotentiaries which was convened at Basel from 20 to 22 March 1989. A central goal of the Basel Convention is environmentally sound management (ESM), the aim of which is to protect human health and the environment by minimizing hazardous waste production whenever possible. ESM means addressing the issue through an integrated life-cycle approach, which involves strong controls from the generation of a hazardous waste to its storage, transport, treatment, reuse, recycling, recovery and final disposal. For further information on the Parties to the Convention, see country fact sheets here.

Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs)

The Stockholm Convention is a global treaty to protect human health and the environment from persistent organic pollutants (POPs). POPs are chemicals that remain intact in the environment for long periods, become widely distributed geographically, accumulate in the fatty tissue of living organisms and are toxic to humans and wildlife. POPs circulate globally and can cause damage wherever they travel. In implementing the Convention, Governments will take measures to eliminate or reduce the release of POPs into the environment.