2008-12-21
Statement of Minister in Rome, 3092008
Minister for Environment, Science and Technology Ganesh Shah represented Nepal at Ministerial Meeting of the Fourth Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade. This conference was held in Rome 30 to 31 October 2008. The Convention was adopted on 10 September 1998 by a Conference of Plenipotentiaries in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The Convention entered into force on 24 February 2004. Nepal became a party to the Convention on 2007. Some 50 Environment Ministers from around the world were attending the Meeting. Beyond the ministers, high level delegates of the different countries attended the Conference. The objectives of the Convention are: 1. 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; 2. to contribute to the environmentally sound use of those hazardous chemicals, 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.