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Illegal trade

The effectiveness of global chemicals treaties

Nature Sustainability volume 6, pages 1289–1290 (2023)Cite this article

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The Rotterdam Convention helps ensure that international trade of harmful chemicals is transparent, and it gives parties the right to refuse imports of specific substances. Now a study shows that illegal trade of chemicals listed under the Rotterdam Convention is ongoing alongside legal trade.

As many global environmental agreements have matured over the past few decades, parties and policy advocates are asking questions about their effectiveness. Social scientists in the 1990s began to focus on how to define and measure the effectiveness of environmental treaties and regimes4. Their contributions show the challenges of demonstrating that a particular environmental treaty influenced specific actions by national governments (and relevant private sector and civil society actors)5. For example, a decision to prohibit the import or use of a specific chemical substance may or may not be primarily the result of obligations under a particular treaty, as it could be taken for a whole host of other domestic legal, political and/or economic reasons. Also, some regulatory and administrative actions that parties to a specific environmental agreement have taken could have been taken even in the absence of the treaty.

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References

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  1. Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Henrik Selin

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  1. Henrik Selin
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Correspondence to Henrik Selin.

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Selin, H. The effectiveness of global chemicals treaties. Nat Sustain 6, 1289–1290 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01168-8

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