IFCS/FSC/08.12
22 May 2008
IFCS Award of Merit and Special Recognition Award
IFCS Awards of Merit and IFCS Special Recognition Awards are presented at sessions of the Forum. The sixth session (15-19 September 2008) will be hosted by the Government of Senegal in Dakar.The Award of Merit recognizes a person(s) or organization(s) for outstanding contributions to international activities in chemical safety. Nominations are invited from all participants in the IFCS.
The Special Recognition Awards recognize those contributing in an exceptional way on a special chemical topic or activity. Individuals, institutions or groups are eligible for the Special Recognition Award. The Special Recognition Award is distinguished from the Award of Merit which recognizes outstanding contributions on a global scale of a broader scope and nature. Nominations are accepted through Forum Standing Committee members.
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The Prize Committee composes the President and Vice Presidents of the Forum. The Committee makes, by majority of its members, a recommendation to the Forum Standing Committee who will make the final selection.
The Prize Committee[1], met via teleconference on 22 May 2008 to consider the nominations for the IFCS Awards. The Committee submits the recommendations presented in this paper to the Forum Standing Committee for its consideration and decision.
Award of Merit - Recommendations
The Prize Committee recommends the following two nominations as recipients of an IFCS Award of Merit:
See Annex for nomination summary statements.
1. Joint Award
Dr Georg Karlaganis
Head
Substances, Soil & Biotech. Div
Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy & Communications
Federal Office for the environment, Switzerland
and
Dr Franz Xaver Perrez
Head
Global Affairs Section
International Affairs Division
Federal Office for the Environment, Switzerland
2. Ms Barbara Dinham
Current position:
Freelance Consultant
Environmental Policy, Social Justice Advocacy
Trustee Bhopal Medical Appeal
Previous positions:
Director, Pesticide Action Network- UK (Pan UK) (2000-2006)
Senior Policy Advisor Pan UK (1990 - 2000)
Senior Researcher Earth Resources Research
Special Recognition Award - Recommendations
The Prize Committee recommends the following two nominations as the recipients of the IFCS Special Recognition Award. See Annex for nomination summary statements.
1. Mr Ravi Agarwal
Director
Srishti/Toxics Link
New Delhi
India
2. Dr Lilian Corra
International Society of Doctors for the Environment (ISDE)
Past President and responsible for Latin America
Buenos Aires
Argentina
Argentinian Association of Doctors for the Environment (AAMMA)
President and founder
Buenos Aires
Argentina
Awards of Merit
1. Joint Award
Dr Georg Karlaganis
Head
Substances, Soil & Biotech. Div
Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy & Communications
Federal Office for the environment, Switzerland
and
Dr Franz Xaver Perrez
Head
Global Affairs Section
International Affairs Division
Federal Office for the Environment, Switzerland
Nomination summary:
Dr Karlaganis and Dr Perrez are nominated for a joint award in recognition of the strong and productive cooperative team work they carry out that enables them to make significant and substantive contributions to international work on the sound management of chemicals. Their productive collaboration and complementary expertise has provided strategic scientific, technical and policy guidance and direction for international work on identified priority topics and areas:
- the development, agreement and implementation of SAICM as a new international framework for global chemicals management,
- the negotiations and implementation of the Stockholm POPs Convention and Rotterdam PIC Convention,
- heavy metals,
- IFCS work in general and in preparation of agenda topics,
- enabling work of developing countries and countries with economies in transition,
- enabling regional efforts.
2. Ms Barbara Dinham
Current position:
Freelance Consultant
Environmental Policy, Social Justice Advocacy
Trustee Bhopal Medical Appeal
Previous positions:
Director, Pesticide Action Network- UK (Pan UK) (2000-2006)
Senior Policy Advisor Pan UK (1990 - 2000)
Senior Researcher Earth Resources Research
Nomination summary statement:
Ms. Barbara Dinham is a leading environmental activist, policy expert and researcher focusing on pesticide hazards and human rights issues in agriculture worldwide. She has served in a leadership role within the Pesticide Action Network for 16 years, including as Director of Pesticide Action Network UK for 6 years. PAN–UK, an important part of PAN International, works to eliminate the dangers of toxic pesticides, peoples’ exposure to them, and their presence in the environment. Nationally in the UK and globally, PAN-UK promotes safer alternatives, the production of healthy food, and sustainable farming.
Ms. Dinham was a key influence in developing the principle of Prior Informed Consent (PIC), first as part of the FAO Pesticide Code of Conduct and the London Guildelines, and then when it became incorporated into the Rotterdam Convention (PIC treaty), including work to ensure that the precautionary principle was the guiding principle for this convention.
Ms Dinham has been a longtime and very active civil society leader within the IFCS process, working to promote the application of precautionary principle in relation to chemicals and toxics. She played a leading role in the IFCS workgroup that developed the Forum’s position on acutely toxic pesticides, and worked tirelessly to ensure that the issue of worker protection, safety and health were given adequate attention.
Deeply involved in international chemicals and toxics work, she has been a prominent and highly valued participant of key international fora such as the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, Food and Agriculture Organization, World Bank and UNEP, where she has strongly represented the voice of civil society and of communities worldwide affected by pesticides. In all these arenas, Ms. Dinham is well known and respected for her hard work, her ability to collaborate effectively in international processes, and her commitment to the highest standards of accuracy.
Under Ms. Dinham’s leadership, PAN-UK has become an internationally respected and successful environmental organization with a broad scope of work ranging from
• Sustainable solutions for the large and toxic obsolete pesticide stockpiles in Africa, • Pesticide Use Reduction Strategies in Europe,
• Control of pesticides in developing countries,
• Influencing the agricultural policy in the UK and EU,
• Industrial hazards and human rights,
• Safe disposal of pesticides,
• Fair trade and fair agriculture,
• Women’s Health and gender-related pesticide issues in agriculture,
• Organic cotton production and promotion of sustainable, fair trade textile markets.
Ms. Dinham chaired the UK Food Group umbrella of British NGOs involved in development and food sovereignty issues and was a member of the external Sustainable Agriculture Advisory Board to Unilever food company during 1999-2004.
A highly regarded and well-known scholar, Ms. Dinham has written or co-authored eight books focusing on food security, agri-business, pesticide hazards and pesticide and gender issues.
Ms. Barbara Dinham now works as a freelance consultant, keeping in close touch with the PAN network and maintaining her involvement with the FAO Code of Conduct. She is also a Trustee of the Bhopal Medical Appeal (BMA), which supports survivors of the world's worst industrial poisoning disaster in Bhopal, India.
Ms. Barbara Dinham has been a major player on the stage of international advocacy for sustainable agriculture and for corporate accountability. In the light of Ms. Barbara Dinham’s international work over the past three decades to make the dangers of pesticides widely recognized in the international policy arena; her work in international pesticides elimination and sustainable agriculture advocacy; and her consistently outstanding and creative work on human rights and chemical safety, we enthusiastically nominate her for an IFCS award of merit.
Special Recognition Award
1. Mr Ravi Agarwal
Director
Srishti/Toxics Link
New Delhi
India
Nomination summary statement:
Mr. Ravi Agarwal has worked tirelessly on issues related to chemical safety and healthy communities in the developing world for two decades. A catalyst for change, he is the founder and director of Toxics Link, a non-profit organization based in New Delhi, India. Toxics Link works on areas of toxics, waste and chemical safety and has a strong information outreach program that uses research and advocacy to strengthen citizen campaigns against toxic pollution, to help to push industries towards cleaner production, and to link groups working on toxics, waste and chemical safety issues.
Mr. Agarwal was consulting as an engineer when he concurrently began working in the environmental field. He joined the organization Srishti as a volunteer in 1993. Srishti, which focuses on waste issues, attempts to incorporate local, community based and decentralized waste management perspectives and approaches into urban waste practices. At the policy level Srishti has successfully brought alternative perspectives into regulatory guidelines and policy, while at the community level Srishti has implemented community based waste management schemes using eco-friendly technology like composting and bio-methanation.
Over time Mr. Agarwal’s dedication to improving waste practices and influencing policy resulted in a move from volunteering for Srishti to being responsible for it. He then helped found Toxics Link in 1996, first as an information outreach based in Srishti, and then later as an independent organization.
Toxics Link has been part of the International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN[2]) since its inception in 1998 and is an IPEN Regional Hub for the South Asia region. Mr. Agarwal serves on both the Steering Committee and the Executive Board of IPEN, bringing his experience and perspective to a network that regularly participates in international processes that shape chemical safety discussions and policies. As the IPEN Hub for the South Asia Region, Toxics Link and Mr. Agarwal have helped increase NGO knowledge about POPs and other chemicals by, for example, holding capacity-building and skill-sharing workshops on POPs that are attended by participants from varied sectors and numerous countries throughout South Asia and other regions.
In addition, Toxics Link and Mr. Agarwal participate in other international networks including Healthcare Without Harm, GAIA (Global Anti-Incineration Alliance/Global Alliance of Incinerator Alternatives), Basel Action Network, and the Zero Mercury Working Group. Mr. Agarwal is also on both the advisory board of Khoj Artists Association (a well-known not-for-profit for the arts in India) and Tactical Tech, an UK-based international initiative to use new media techniques for advocacy in the social sector.
Toxics Link’s role in helping form Indian national legislation on bio-medical waste in 1998 was important and far-reaching. The legislation came about after four years of campaigning and research, and was the first legal recognition of the link between dioxin and waste in India. Toxics Link’s assistance in shaping the Indian law on this issue was innovative in a developing country and was subsequently replicated in other developing countries.
Additionally, Toxics Link and Mr. Agarwal began work on e-waste issues in 2002, and this work will result in a new Indian policy on e-waste shortly.
In early 2006, Toxics Link took the lead on a report about toxics in toys (Toying with Toxics: An Investigation of Lead and Cadmium in Soft Toys in Three Cities in India), exposing the fact that unsafe heavy metals can be found in toys that children play with. This pioneering report elevated local and national consciousness about an issue that subsequently became newsworthy in other areas of the world. In September of that year, Mr. Agarwal gave a pivotal presentation about the Toxics Link report at the IFCS Forum V Meeting in Budapest.
Confronting existing unsafe practices and their intertwined interests has had personal risks for Mr. Agarwal. In 2001, Toxics Link, in association with local farmer organizations, compiled the field case study, “The Killing Fields of Warangal,” which suggested the role that pesticides may have played in the death of farmers in Warangal. Mr. Agarwal then filed the study (along with a large body of data) as evidence of poor farming practices that resulted in unacceptable levels of pesticides and heavy metals contamination in food in India, imploring that “food safety” be better institutionalized in the country. Subsequently the national pesticide industry, through the trade association Crop Care, launched criminal cases against Mr. Agarwal and others, claiming the Warangal study was defamatory. They also launched a public campaign to malign Mr. Agarwal and Toxics Link, even though the case was still in court. This type of strategic litigation is becoming an increasingly favored tool for silencing public interest advocates, because it can be drawn out for years and can financially cripple its targets.
Mr. Agarwal regularly contributes articles to various publications, including, for example: The Curse of Tech Trash, found in Businessworld Online. He also frequently authors position papers such as Comments on the Draft Hazardous Materials Rules 2007, which he collaborated with the Basel Action Network on. He has been on the selection committee for the TERI Corporate Social Responsibility Awards for the past three years, he received the Ashoka fellowship[3] in 1997, and he holds Communications Engineering along with Masters in Business Administration degrees.
Mr. Agarwal’s ability to build an institutional presence through the development of Toxics Link took a great deal of work and planning, and has resulted in a presence in the field that allows him to positively affect the chemical safety issues he focuses on. He has committed his life to the pursuit of chemical safety and environmental justice for the most vulnerable in society (women and children, peasant farmers and the poor and disadvantaged) by providing both research and advocacy to help ensure that they are protected against the worst of toxic impacts. He has worked vigorously to highlight the unsafe chemical practices inherent in many of India’s waste practices, as well as in toy production and pesticide use. This work has helped to elevate local and national consciousness about these issues, and has been integrated into national policy that has resonated internationally. Mr. Agarwal’s dedication to chemical safety and healthy communities is reflected in the work he has done over the past two decades and in how he continues to stand up for positive change both in India and around the world.
2. Dr Lilian Corra
International Society of Doctors for the Environment (ISDE)
Past President and responsible for Latin America
Buenos Aires
Argentina
Argentinian Association of Doctors for the Environment (AAMMA)
President and founder
Buenos Aires
Argentina
Nomination summary;
Dr. Lilian Corra is a paediatrician / neonatologist with a strong background in environmental education and environmental issues. She has extensive experience on the impacts on health of environmental factors.