This official side event to the UN Ocean Conference was organized by the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN), University of Gothenberg, Swedish Institute for Marine Environment & Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association (WIOMSA) in collaboration with the Geneva Beat Plastic Pollution Dialogues.
The planetary boundaries concept presents a set of nine boundaries that when crossed increases the risk of generating large-scale abrupt or irreversible environmental changes. The ocean is the chemical sector’s global dumpsite, where beyond the visible plastic pollution, new science is revealing a much more insidious global threat: the escalating chemical production and invisible pollution crisis.
In 2022 the crisis was revealed as the planetary boundaries of chemical pollution were assessed and published in the study Outside the Safe Operating Space of the Planetary Boundary for Novel Entities. In this innovative peer reviewed publication, a group of 14 internationally renowned scientists concluded that rates of production and release of hazardous chemicals used to make plastics, pesticides and industrial chemicals exceeds these boundaries.
The main goal of this side-event and contribution to the conference is to form new partnerships, communicate the need for a more progressive chemical policy and management and to speed up the formation and implementation of an International Panel on Chemical Pollution, IPCP.
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