As the international community finalizes and implements the post-2020 global biodiversity framework, collaboration between the four chemicals and waste conventions and the biodiversity-related conventions can provide ongoing refinements to the targets and indicators on pollution as they relate to mercury, POPs, pesticides and hazardous and other wastes. This is particularly important as the 2020 GBO-5 concluded that CBD Aichi pollution Target 8 was not achieved.

and information in this study and the ongoing work of the four conventions can contribute to achieving the CBD’s 2030 pollution target. Their ongoing work includes national reporting, environmental monitoring, and treaty effectiveness and strategic framework evaluations where biodiversity considerations could be increasingly integrated, along with efforts to contribute to the 2030 SDGs, which this study highlights as a point at which chemicals, waste and biodiversity issues also converge.

More specifically, whether or not the 2030 biodiversity pollution target is drafted to reflect priority pollutants/chemicals such as mercury and other heavy metals, POPs, pesticides, wastes (including plastics) this study provides baseline information about key interlinkages that can serve the four conventions’ governing bodies to consider the detailed contributions they could make to the refinement and implementation of the CBD’s 2030 pollution target and indicators going forward. Examples could include specific targets related to mercury air emission reductions, reduction of concentrations of POPs in environmental media, enhanced focus of the Rotterdam Convention on neonicotinoids and glyphosate pesticides, the enhancement of legislative implementation of the Basel Convention’s plastic waste amendments, or decisions on international cooperation and coordination that build these inter-convention connections (e.g. forwarding this study to the CBD Conference of the Parties, or working on common areas of concern such as ASGM).

This study also highlights that current research on and regulation of chemicals in the environment tends to take a simplistic view and does not account for the complexity of the real world, including how to differentiate and quantify the effects of multiple stressors on ecosystems and how to improve risk assessment of such stressors (including at different levels of biological organization) to enhance predictability. Enhanced and focused collaboration between the chemicals and waste conventions and those related to biodiversity provides an opportunity for each to share their pressure points and complexities and mobilize limited resources towards prioritized solutions that benefit both. Collaboration on ASGM, plastics, e-waste, pesticides and pollinators, illegal trade, the sharing of monitoring data and scientific research, along with shared communications and messaging, could produce significant benefits to both the biodiversity and chemicals and wastes worlds.

This study has identified UNEP’s Assessment Report on Issues of Concern for UNEA-5, which consists of an assessment of eight emerging policy issues and other issues of concern under SAICM (e.g. nanomaterials, e-waste) and 11 issues with emerging evidence of risks identified by GCO-II, and identified possible contributions of the four MEAs to addressing those issues. It also identified the ongoing SAICM intersessional process as it shapes the beyond-2020 framework on chemicals and wastes and how this relates to the four chemicals and waste conventions.