Recommendations   

This section will treat the questions that guided the discussions and are reflected in three main areas:  pesticides, urban and industrial questions.  The challenges, difficulties, actions and strategies for mobilizing the civil society around the process of implementation of the Stockholm Convention on POPs form the main conclusions and recommendations of the Seminar.    

How is the present situation?  

The lack of information among the social and workers movements and the society in general may be considered one of the main problems identified by the participants. 

The actual workers’ labor conditions may be illustrated as follows: the companies normally do not provide the workers with information about the impacts to the health and environment caused by the chemical products and substances handled by them or even about the emissions released during the industrial processes. Furthermore, the workers do not, in general, receive appropriate protection equipment or have access to medical reports, and few of them are informed about their laboratorial exams results.  The workers use to report on intimidation and obscure pressure cases against communities’ leaders and workers in Brazil, violating rights and involving cooptation, corruption and sometimes, death threats.   

The Study of Environmental Impacts, a mandatory instrument of the environmental licensing processes (EIA/RIMAS), does not adequately include the health public issues.  There are many claims about the difficulties to access information during the evaluation period, and even when the information are given to the communities, they are difficult to understand and not accessible to common people.  Notwithstanding, the local community knowledge would be useful for the governmental analysis during the obligatory public audiences of the environmental licensing process, but the incomplete information given to communities, the inappropriate language used in the official documents, the pressure made by the entrepreneurs sector without taking into account the technical ground, and the short time provided for the analysis of the technical documents and identification of their failures are some of the many difficulties that the communities and the workers have to face in their daily-life defense actions for their environmental health rights.  

The communities threatened by the enterprises have technical difficulties to appropriately analyze the information of the licensing processes, aggravating even more the negative scenario.  To make this process less unequal, the society has involved the Public Prosecutor at a regional and national level, what has resulted in a great number of legal actions.  But there is an excessive quantity of environmental and social claims in relation to the reduced capacity of the Public Prosecutors to solve problems.  However, this is still an important tool for the citizens.  Other area that needs more attention by the governmental authorities and private sector is the necessity to require clean technology development and/or transfer in the licensing processes. 

About the urban questions, such as waste, there is not obligation to recycle them, even that Brazil be internationally recognized by its waste recycling programs.  The reality is that such programs are implemented under bad social and environmental conditions that would be condemned in many developed countries.  Many families survive through the waste picking, but there are many few governmental programs to include such “informal” workers in the waste management strategies.  In the last years, although the incineration was not the common and main focus of the final waste disposition policies, national and international companies began to invest in projects of this kind.  Incineration is seen by many sectors of the civil society as a perverse social exclusion process. For the Brazilian recyclable waste pickers unions, incineration is one of the main anthropogenic non-intentional sources of dioxins and furans, and may divert good investments in recycling, an activity with great potential of social inclusion.  Although Brazil has recently approved medical care waste management legislation providing recycling programs using alternative technologies (instead of thermal treatment), they are still rarely applied as the best environmental practices.   

About pesticides, the Brazilian vast continental territory, the lack of responsibility of the most part of the industrial sector during many years and the incompetent obsolete material collection governmental policies resulted in many contaminated sites, workers and communities victimized by production, storage, use and disposal of such products.  The efforts to implement pilot projects for decontamination are smaller than reality requires, and up to this date Brazil have not created a specific financial mechanism to support a strong governmental intervention to prevent, to set up the obligation to prevent and to remediate ‘orphan’ contaminated sites in the country.   

The illegal obsolete pesticide trade requires a strong action by governments, not only at the local level but under cooperation with the neighboring countries, since the long common borders facilitate the illegal commerce. The lack of equipment, laboratories and human resources qualified to work on control measures are additional points that must be solved.  Besides, the ecological agriculture and organic food production do not receive the appropriate attention in spite of being a clean, sustainable and more adapted alternative for the sustainable agricultural production.   

What do we want?  

The participants approached some perspectives to the future.  The consolidation of the right to information (integral and understandable) was considered as a priority, capable of generating the necessary transformations and one of the fundamental requirements of an appropriate implementation of the Stockholm Convention, a vital aspect of the chemicals environmental management as a whole.  In other countries, as USA and many Europeans countries, the access to information and the industry obligation to publish information on pollutants issues and transfer have helped many communities and workers to prevent themselves from the toxic exposure.  One important tool to be developed and implemented could be the PRTR – Pollutant Release and Transfer Register.  

However, the access to information is not the only fundamental point, but also the appropriate representation and effective participation of the civil society in the policy planning, decision-making processes and implementation stages. The adequate capacity building and technical and financial learning to support the social movements are the main questions to be solved.   

In urban areas is necessary a special attention by the authorities responsible for urban waste management. At the federal level, some measures shall be adopted by the National Solid Waste Policy that is still under discussion at the National Congress, to assure the social inclusion through the formal insertion of the waste pickers in the whole waste management system.  The perception is that the law project named as National Solid Waste Policy shall not be generic because it may worsen some good conditions obtained already by previous negotiations. An idea would be the obligation of forecasting investments in cooperatives, infra-structure and participation in decision-making at local level, emphasizing the social inclusion.  A national policy should also incorporate goals to decreasing industry and consumer waste production, recycling of materials, increasing responsible consumption and post consumption producer responsibility. At the state level, the government should pay attention to the necessary infra-structure to assure the goals be met regionally through broad discussions before each decisive decision-making.  At the local level, the authorities shall guarantee that, through specific programs, waste deposit sites (landfills and provisory waste deposits) do not need to be used anymore (reducing gradually and totally eliminating such areas), and the permits for new incineration plants should not be granted.  The local capacity building involving the multisector approach may generate positive results.  The regional waste management plans may facilitate the local planning on consumption, disposal and material recycling, giving preference to the waste picker’s activities and promoting the awareness of the society as to their importance as agents that must be involved as well.  Such approaches make part of a proposed Zero Waste Policy that, in a long-time perspective, contributes to avoid POPs releases and at the same time puts into practice the principles of the environmentally sustainable human development.  

In a country like Brazil which occupies the first position in the international worst income distribution rank, environmental policies can not be disconnected from de social policies, but they shall have to use them as a tool to support the Environmental Justice implementation.  From this point of view, if the National Implementation Plan of the Stockholm Convention on POPs succeeded, it may offer to the Brazilian society a more sustainable and fair future. 

The following part offers a set of strategies that may contribute to mobilization, inclusion and participation of different segments of the civil society under the national implementation plan of the Stockholm Convention (NIP-POPs).