The Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) was adopted in 2006 as a policy framework to promote chemical safety around the world. Chemical production is one of the major and most globalized sectors of the world economy. Acknowledgement of the essential economic role of chemicals and their contribution to improved living standards must be balanced with recognition of potential costs, including the chemical industry’s heavy use of water and energy and the adverse impacts of many chemicals on the environment and human health.
SAICM contained an ambitious goal to achieve by 2020 the sound management of chemicals throughout their life cycle so that chemicals are produced and used in ways that minimize significant adverse impacts on the environment and human health.
The fourth International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM) in 2015 agreed to start a negotiating process to determine what sort of global platform or framework might be preferable to the existing SAICM process to promote the sound management of chemicals and waste beyond 2020. After years of negotiations, which were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the fifth meeting of the ICCM in 2023 adopted a new multi-stakeholder and multi-sectoral plan for the integrated management of chemicals and waste: the Global Framework on Chemicals – For a planet free of harm from chemicals and waste.