Earth Today | New scientific panel for pollution prevention
Published:Thursday | June 26, 2025 | 12:06 AM
THERE IS a new global science-policy panel in town and their focus is pollution prevention.
“Designed to fill a major gap in the global environmental architecture, the panel will provide countries with independent, policy-relevant scientific advice on chemicals, waste, and pollution prevention,” the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) revealed in a news release last week.
Talks, it explained, began in 2022, on the heels of the United Nations Environment Assembly resolution calling for the establishment of an intergovernmental science-policy body on chemicals, waste and pollution prevention.
In addition to supporting “horizon scanning” for emergent threats, the panel is to also “conduct global assessments, identify knowledge gaps, communicate complex science in policy-friendly formats, and integrate capacity for national decision-making in relation to the panel’s function”.
“This panel represents science and cooperation coming together to minimise the negative impacts of chemicals and waste and prevent pollution. This is the first step in delivering meaningful action to address our global waste and pollution crisis and secure a healthier, safer future for all,” noted Inger Andersen, UNEP’s executive director.
“During complex times, environmental multilateralism has yet again delivered for people and for our planet. Now our focus turns to operationalising the panel so that it can quickly and effectively support countries, safeguard our environment and protect generations to come,” she added.
The new panel is said to complete a global scientific trifecta, together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services – with its attention on chemicals waste and pollution prevention deemed as timely as it is important.
There is, for example, a growing waste generation problem which presents a challenge to public health – one that has been highlighted by the 2024 Waste Management Outlook, a UNEP report.
“Urgent change is needed to prevent the costs of waste spiralling out of control. All stakeholders – public, private and civil society – must work together to reduce waste, reduce its complexity and reduce the leakage of legacy pollutants into the environment,” said the report, titled ‘Beyond an age of waste: Turning rubbish into a resource’.
More than two billion tonnes of municipal solid waste is generated each year, making it necessary to act with urgency to arrest the problem, the report revealed. Being weighed in the balance is public health, with “between 400,000 and one million people” dying annually as a result of diseases related to mismanaged waste. These diseases include diarrhoea, malaria, heart disease and cancer.
Chemicals, the UNEP explained, are also a problem.
“While chemicals are used daily in modern life, there can be unintended negative impacts that contributes to global pollution and increases the burden of disease – contaminating the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the soil we depend on. The impacts on human and environmental health are profound,” the release noted.
Against this background, preparations are now to be made for the hosting of the first plenary session of the panel at which time its work programme as well as “priorities and partner engagement” are to be discussed and adopted by governments.