22nd Meeting of the Chemical Review Committee (CRC-22)

The Rotterdam Convention enables countries to share information about chemicals in trade. When two or more countries ban or severely restrict a pesticide or industrial chemical for health or environmental reasons, this can trigger the Convention's prior informed consent (PIC) procedure. Once a chemical is subject to the PIC procedure, other countries gain access to information on its risks before deciding whether to allow its import. The Chemical Review Committee (CRC) is the technical body that identifies which chemicals meet the criteria for this procedure, based on notifications submitted by Parties. 

At its twenty-second meeting (CRC-22), the Committee is scheduled to review up to 22 new notifications covering eight candidate chemicals. Seven of those eight chemicals are pesticides: atrazine, azinphos-ethyl, endrin, mephosfolan, methomyl, phosphamidon, and prothoate. Only one, lead chromates, is an industrial chemical. The Committee will also address six carryover pesticide notifications from CRC-21 that it was unable to finish reviewing in 2025, including carbaryl, fenamiphos, phenthoate, profenofos, prothiofos, and quinalphos. Adding the new and carryover cases together, and 13 of the 14 chemicals on the Committee's docket this year are pesticides. 

A pesticide-heavy agenda is not new. The Committee has often grappled with how to assess pesticide notifications from countries that may lack the capacity to conduct scientific tests when restricting or banning a substance, or to find the necessary information to complete a compelling nomination dossier. Pesticides are, therefore often the most contentious chemicals at CRC meetings and the Rotterdam Convention Conferences of the Parties (COPs). Roughly two-thirds of chemicals listed in the Convention are pesticides, and pesticides represent almost all of the substances that the COP cannot agree to list. 

Finally, the Committee will review the outcome of the intersessional task group working on severely hazardous pesticide formulations (SHPFs). The criteria for recommending SHPFs for the PIC procedure are more flexible than those for notifying a final regulatory action, as they are intended to allow any country to flag a concerning pesticide formulation based on field incidents. That flexibility has previously sparked debate over whether reported effects, such as headaches, are enough to justify global information exchange. The task group has spent the intersessional period revising the human health and environmental incident report forms used to gather this kind of evidence, and CRC-22 will consider whether those revisions resolve the earlier concerns.

CRC-22 will take place at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) headquarters in Rome, Italy, from 15 to 18 September 2026, with pre-meetings of intersessional task groups on 14 September. The meeting will be held back-to-back with the twenty-second meeting of the POPs Review Committee of the Stockholm Convention.

The Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) writer for this meeting is Jennifer Allan, Ph.D. The Digital Editor is Diego Noguera. The Editor is Pamela Chasek, Ph.D.