The Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (Rotterdam Convention) was developed in response to growing global production and trade in hazardous chemicals and the need for countries to increase capacities to monitor and control the import and use of these chemicals.
As per Article 1 of the Convention, its objective is 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, by providing for a national decision-making process on their import and export and by disseminating these decisions to Parties.
As of January 2021, there are 164 Parties to the Convention, inclusive of 12 Caribbean countries.
Map of Caribbean Parties to the Rotterdam Convention
The scope of the Convention includes pesticides and industrial chemicals that have been banned or severely restricted for health or environmental reasons by Parties and which have been notified by Parties for inclusion in the PIC procedure (Annex III), and it promotes the exchange of information between Parties and the Secretariat.