The 62nd edition of the Rotterdam Convention PIC Circular is now available on our website!

The PIC Circular is a key document in the implementation of the Rotterdam Convention, both for the operation of the Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure and as a mechanism for the exchange of information on hazardous chemicals. It is published in June and December in English, French and Spanish.

Among others, the PIC Circular contains information on:

• Notifications of final regulatory action (FRA) received since the last PIC Circular
• Proposals for inclusion of severely hazardous pesticide formulations (SHPFs) in the PIC procedure
• Chemicals subject to the PIC procedure
• Import responses received since the last PIC Circular
• Information exchange on chemicals recommended for listing in Annex III

Highlights of the 62nd PIC Circular include the following:

• The Rotterdam Convention COP-12 decided to amend Annex III to the Convention to list carbosulfan and fenthion (ultra-low-volume formulations at or above 640 g active ingredient/L), making them subject to the PIC procedure, and approved the related decision guidance documents. The amendments entered into force for all Parties on 22 October 2025. Parties are requested to provide import responses for these chemicals by 21 July 2026.
• Since the issuance of the last PIC Circular 61 in June 2025, the Secretariat received and verified 112 import responses for 57 chemicals, submitted by 17 Parties.
• 54 Parties have submitted all import responses. 113 Parties have not yet provided import responses for one or more of the chemicals listed in Annex III. 9 Parties have not yet provided any import responses.
• 8 new FRA notifications submitted by 4 Parties are published in Part A, Appendix I of the PIC Circular 62.

Mountains are biodiversity havens, but it’s also where a silent crisis is unfolding. They are drowning in plastic and other waste: From discarded bottles on hiking trails to microplastics embedded in the snow, the problem is escalating at an alarming rate.

Mountain areas host both sprawling cities and rural settlements, providing a home for about 15 per cent of the global population. Population growth, overconsumption and tourism, the generation of waste – especially plastic waste – is surging across mountains. This endangers freshwater resources and biodiversity and in turn poses serious risks for downstream regions.

Mountainous regions face unique challenges and are fragile ecosystems in so far as they have harsh terrain, limited waste management infrastructure, and costly transport make cleanup operations evermore challenging.

Understanding the scale of the problem is the first step towards solving it. Five mountainous countries -Eswatini, Kazakhstan, Peru, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan - have completed national inventories of plastic waste using standardised methodologies. These inventories reveal a troubling trend: Plastic waste generation is rising sharply in Central Asia, driven largely by packaging materials such as PET, PE, and PP.

The numbers are striking.

• Tajikistan alone produces an estimated 301,000 to 322,000 tons of plastic waste annually;
• Kazakhstan reported more than 296,000 tons in 2022;
• Uzbekistan exceeded 249,000 tons in the same year.

These findings have prompted action beyond data collection. Each of these countries has carried out regulatory assessments to identify policy gaps and propose improvements aligned with the Basel Convention, laying the groundwork for more effective and environmentally sound management of plastic waste.

So how do we turn the tide on plastic pollution in the world’s highest places?

Data and policy are essential, but real change happens on the ground. Basel Convention funded pilot projects in Kazakhstan, Peru, and North Macedonia are already demonstrating what practical solutions look like.

Infrastructure alone cannot solve the problem - people need to be part of the solution. Public awareness campaigns have been central to these projects. Kazakhstan and Peru launched multilingual campaigns targeting tourists and mountain guides, supported by brochures, videos, and social media engagement. In Kazakhstan, more than 5,000 people were reached online. North Macedonia took a creative approach, producing animated videos, organizing community cleanups that engaged over 5,800 volunteers, and distributing educational materials in both Macedonian and Albanian. Peru’s “Leave Footprints, Not Waste” campaign combined culturally sensitive education with interactive games, while Tajikistan shared its findings at national and global events to amplify the message.

The momentum is far from slowing down. With support from the Norwegian Retailers’ Environment Fund (NREF), new activities are underway in Argentina, Chile, Eswatini, Lesotho, Rwanda, and Seychelles, alongside follow-up projects in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In early 2026, Lesotho will host a major cleanup campaign and stakeholder workshop, while Nepal will join the initiative with interventions planned in the Himalayas in partnership with GRID-Arenda and DOKO recycling.

Plastic waste is a global challenge, but these efforts prove that data-driven policies, community engagement, and international cooperation can turn the tide on this global challenge.

The Committee held its long-awaited inaugural meeting, setting in motion a comprehensive agenda aimed at securing the implementation and compliance with the obligations under the Convention.

Geneva, 28 November 2025 – In an intensive three half-day online sessions, the Committee advanced a series of decisive measures to strengthen implementation and compliance with the Convention’s core obligations. These included obligations to designate country contacts, to transmit national reports, to transmit national implementation plans, to develop legislation and to take other measures to eliminate and restrict persistent organic pollutants. These actions also aim to reduce or eliminate releases from unintentional production as well as from stockpiles and wastes. The Committee also initiated its work to strengthen Parties’ implementation of the obligations related to the provision of technical assistance and financial resources to developing countries and countries with economies in transition. The Committee built on this momentum by further launching its engagement to work with the Implementation and Compliance Committees of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal and the Rotterdam Conventionon the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade. Finally, the Committee initiated its works towards identifying questions relating to individual Parties’ compliance.

Expressing her satisfaction with the progress achieved, the Chair of the Committee, Ms. Jimena Nieto Carrasco (Colombia), said that “In some respects, the Committee has to catch up with more than twenty years of developments under the Convention, and I am proud to say that the members succeeded in setting strong foundations for its important work”.

The Committee agreed that going forward, it will review updated, detailed data on the status of Parties’ implementation of their obligations. The upcoming discussions will draw on information about activities by the Secretariat and key partners, including the Global Environment Facility, the United Nations Environment Programme and the 17 Stockholm Convention Regional and Sub-regional Centres, aimed at improving the implementation of the Convention. They will also review insights on challenges faced by Parties in meeting specific obligations under the Convention and consider possible recommendations on how to improve Parties’ implementation of the Convention.

“The Committee will help ensure that Parties, individually and collectively, comply with their obligations,” noted the Executive Secretary of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions, Mr. Rolph Payet. He went on to underscore that the work programme of the

Committee was a testimony to Parties’ ambition to ensure that all the obligations embedded in the Convention are implemented and that the Convention fulfils its objective to protect human health and the environment from the harmful impacts of persistent organic pollutants.

The Committee agreed to hold its second meeting in Geneva in June 2026, back-to-back with the meetings of the Compliance Committees of the Basel Convention and the Rotterdam Convention, and to hold a joint session with those Committees on 19 June 2026.

The Vice Chair of the Committee, Mark Govoni (Switzerland), emphasized the benefits derived from the cooperation between the three committees given the similarities in the obligations under the three convention and in the challenges Parties may face. He added, “It is also an advantage to the conduct of our work that the same Secretariat in serving the three Committees.”

The work of the Stockholm Convention Compliance Committee benefits from generous financial support provided by the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the European Union.

Note to editors

The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, adopted in 2001 and entered into force in 2004, is a global treaty requiring its 186 Parties to take measures to eliminate or reduce the release of POPs into the environment, to protect human health and the environment from chemicals that remain intact for long periods, become widely distributed geographically, accumulate in the fatty tissue of humans and wildlife, and have harmful impacts on human health or on the environment. The Convention currently controls 37 chemicals or groups of chemicals, including polychlorinated dioxins and furans, PCBs, DDT, PFOS, and others.

The compliance procedures of the Stockholm Convention were adopted in 2023, and the first cohort of members of the Compliance Committee was elected in 2025. The objective of the compliance procedures is to assist Parties to comply with their obligations under the Convention and to facilitate, promote, assist in, advise on and aim to secure the implementation of and compliance with the obligations under the Convention. The Compliance Committee, composed of 15 members serving objectively and in the best interests of the Convention, is mandated on one hand, to examine systemic issues of general compliance and implementation of interest to all Parties, and on the other hand to consider submissions or questions of compliance relating to individual Parties, with a view to establishing the facts and the root causes of the matter of concern and to assisting in its resolution.

For information on the Compliance Committee of the Stockholm Convention, contact: Juliette Voinov Kohler, Senior Legal Officer and Chief, Governance Branch, BRS Secretariat, juliette.kohler@un.org.

For media inquiries, contact: Maria Cristina Cardenas, Senior Policy and Strategy Advisor of the BRS Secretariat, maria-cristina.cardenas@un.org.

The Stockholm Convention Compliance Committee is meeting for the first time from 24-26 November in Geneva, marking an important moment for the Convention’s implementation efforts. As the committee kick starts its work, we speak with the Chair Jimena Nieto Carrasco to learn more about the goals of this committee, the challenges ahead, and how the committee plans to support Parties in fulfilling their obligations.

Q: It took more than twenty years for the Compliance Committee to be established under the Stockholm Convention and launch its work. How can the Committee best meet expectations?

Jimena: The Committee can meet the expectations by building on the other experiences under other long-standing compliance committees established under MEAs and not losing any time reinventing the wheel, going straight to work on substantive issues.

Q: How will your experience on other compliance committees, such as the Basel Convention, the Rotterdam Convention, the Minamata Convention, the Biosafety Protocol, and the Paris Agreement, inform your approach to leading the Stockholm Convention Compliance Committee?

Jimena: I hope to be able to share with members the discussions as well as the different avenues and approaches taken by those bodies for the Committee to take informed decisions based on precedents that have proven their efficacy.

Q: The Compliance Committee will be cooperating with the compliance committees of the Basel and Rotterdam conventions. What lessons can be drawn from their work, and how will they inform the Committee’s approach moving forward?

Jimena: It is difficult to list all the lessons from which this Committee can benefit, as many will emerge on a case-by-case basis depending on the specific items on our agenda. Nonetheless, I would like to emphasise that the Secretariat has also gained valuable knowledge and experience through its work with the two other Committees. This accumulated expertise will play an important role in helping us achieve the objective that inspired the long-awaited establishment of the Compliance Committee under the Stockholm Convention.

Q: You have worked in a government and know first-hand of the challenges a developing country may face to comply with its obligations, how will the Committee engage with Parties that face resource or capacity constraints in meeting their obligations under the Convention?

Jimena: The fact that the Committee is in a position to communicate with the support of the Secretariat, with parties experiencing challenges with the implementation, is, in itself a way of triggering political will and facilitating action at the national level. In addition, the Committee can discuss options available for providing assistance and supporting Parties to be in compliance with their international obligations under the Treaty.