At a meeting in Geneva, attended by nearly 2,000 participants from 170 countries, the groups behind the three UN conventions governing chemicals and hazardous waste safety met this month. The conventions (of Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm) came together to strengthen protection against the ill-effects of these chemicals and waste products.

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Over the course of a two-week meeting period, the three legally autonomous conventions held joint meetings in a bid to strengthen cooperation and collaboration, then met individually to deal with their own specific areas of focus, before returning for a final joint session.

The heads of a number of UN organisations were present at the meetings. Speaking after the conclusion of the final joint conference, UN Food and Agriculture Organisation director-general José Graziano da Silva spoke of the conference's relevance to global agriculture. He said that in many countries intensive crop production has depleted agriculture's natural resource base, jeopardising future productivity.

"To fight hunger and eradicate poverty, we will need to find more sustainable ways to produce 60 percent more food by 2050," said the FAO director. However, he recognized that chemical pesticides would continue to be part of farming in many parts of the world in future.

"The challenge is to enable countries to manage pesticides safely, to use the right quantity, at the right time and in the right way and also to apply alternatives to hazardous pesticides. Because when we don't, pesticides continue to pose a serious risk to human health and the environment and will eventually end up as waste. Today, half a million tons of obsolete pesticides are scattered around the developing world." he said.

Graziano da Silva continued, "Around 70 percent of the chemicals addressed by the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions are pesticides, and many are used in agriculture. It is in the best interest of all countries to ensure that the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions can work together, effectively and efficiently, to address various aspects of the chemical life cycle."

The groups said that closer working relationships since 2011 had delivered benefits in terms of addressing the problems associated with use of harmful chemicals and providing technical assistance "that better meets the needs of developing countries and countries with economies in transition." Jim Willis, Executive Secretary of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions added, "In an era of financial austerity, we have learned through synergies how to deliver more to parties while living within the economic limits [imposed] by Governments today."

However, despite UN leaders hailing the conference as a success, and the addition of new harmful materials to the conventions' lists, differing opinions and motivations between the attendees forestalled attempts to crack down on use of dangerous chemicals. According to UN officials in the Food and Agriculture Organisation, "Efforts to adopt a non-compliance mechanism… did not succeed in the face of continuing disagreement on how such a mechanism might function."