THE COUNCIL ,
HAVING REGARD to Article 5 b) of the Convention on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) of 14 December 1960;
HAVING REGARD to the standards developed by the OECD on environmental assessment, pollutant release and transfer registers, material flows and resource productivity, environmental information and reporting, and environmentally sound management of waste;
RECOGNISING that the use of best available techniques and best environmental practices for pollution prevention and control is required by the United Nations Minamata and Stockholm Conventions on chemical pollution prevention;
CONSIDERING that substances released and/or accumulated in the environment can pose risks to human health and the environment, and that controls over releases of a substance to one environmental medium can result in shifting the substance to another environmental medium;
CONSIDERING significant progress made by most countries in preventing and controlling pollution across environmental media;
RECOGNISING that Members and non-Members having adhered to this Recommendation (hereafter the “Adherents”) have different legal and institutional frameworks through which they will implement this Recommendation.
On the proposal of the Environment Policy Committee:
General Principles on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control
I. RECOMMENDS that Adherents practise integrated pollution prevention and control to prevent or minimise the risk of harm to the environment as a whole, recognising the integrated nature of the environment. To that effect, Adherents should:
1. Consider the entire life cycle of substances and products to reduce the holistic environmental impact in line with the concepts of a circular economy, resource efficiency, green/sustainable chemistry, and decarbonisation;
2. Anticipate effects of substances and activities (both new and existing) in all environmental media, including consideration of multiple pathways to exposure and transfer through the environment;
3. Consider the overall environmental performance of activities, covering emissions of pollutants to air, water and soil, generation of waste, use of resources (material, energy, water), energy efficiency, use of safer chemicals, noise, odour, prevention of accidents and restoration of the site upon closure; and
4. Ensure complementary use of effects-oriented policy instruments, such as environmental quality objectives, and source-oriented instruments, such as emission limits.
Essential Policy Aspects
II. RECOMMENDS that Adherents adopt policies, common to all aspects of environmental protection, in which they:
1. Promote the use of less polluting, low-carbon and more circular technologies, including energy conservation, rational use of resources, waste minimisation and substitution of harmful substances with safer alternatives;
2. Encourage precautionary action to mitigate the risk of significant harm to the environment despite the absence of complete information;
3. Provide for mechanisms to ensure that the public is informed and consulted in the evaluation of health and environmental effects of substances and activities as well as in the process of issuing environmental permits;
4. Integrate environmental considerations into private and public decision-making; and
5. Provide for cross-media compliance assurance.
Legislative Aspects
III. RECOMMENDS that Adherents ensure that integration of pollution prevention and control is a common approach of all legislation that affects the environment. This includes not only specific environmental legislation but also legislation in other areas such as energy, transport, agriculture, forestry, extraction industries, tourism, development aid and taxes.
Institutional Measures
IV. RECOMMENDS that Adherents adopt and apply institutional measures and administrative procedures necessary to implement the integrated approach, including:
1. Changing organisational structures and internal operational and decision-making procedures;
2. Establishing co-ordinating mechanisms within and among government bodies; and
3. Developing arrangements for co-operating internationally and among different levels of government within countries.
Management Instruments
V. RECOMMENDS that Adherents implement a variety of management instruments to achieve integrated pollution prevention and control, including:
1. Issuing integrated environmental permits that cover all releases and processes and account for best available techniques (BAT), local environmental conditions and health-based standards;
2. Linking environmental instruments with land-use planning and natural resource management systems and the regulation of services such as transport and other communications;
3. Undertaking environmental assessment of projects, plans and programmes with a potentially significant impact on the environment;
4. Engaging in policy planning to develop strategies to achieve overall improvement of environmental quality;
5. Conducting compliance promotion, monitoring and enforcement activities integrated across all environmental aspects;
6. Using economic instruments; and
7. Encouraging development of cleaner technologies.
Technical Methods
VI. RECOMMENDS that Adherents use the following technical methods to support management instruments to achieve integrated pollution prevention and control:
1. Determine BAT through a stepwise process that includes identifying the sectors or subsectors amenable to adoption of BAT, obtaining multi-stakeholder technical and economic input on the considered techniques, including their environmental performance, collecting and evaluating data, establishing national BAT-based standards, deriving permit limits, establishing monitoring requirements and other permit conditions, and continuous collection of information on emerging techniques;
2. Analyse each stage of the commercial life cycle of a substance or a product from design through manufacture, to use and end-of-life disposal, as well as analysis of the environmental life cycle, including transformation and transfer of chemical substances through all environmental media;
3. Analyse all pathways of exposure to human or ecological receptors;
4. Use inventories of releases to all environmental media from installations, such as pollution release and transfer registers, coupled with inventories of inputs and production volumes to enable development of material flow accounts; and
5. Monitor the state of the environmental media, the ecosystems they support, and the condition of cultural and aesthetic assets to assess respective trends.
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VII. INVITES the Secretary-General and Adherents to disseminate the Recommendation.
VIII. INVITES non-Adherents to take account of and adhere to the Recommendation.
IX. INSTRUCTS the Environment Policy Committee, in co-operation with the Chemicals and Biotechnology Committee, to:
1. Serve as a forum for exchanging information, good practices and innovative experiences with respect to the implementation of this Recommendation;
2. Support and facilitate Adherents' efforts to implement this Recommendation, in co-operation with other relevant international organisations and stakeholders, including through the use of OECD environmental performance reviews and technical guidance on the implementation of BAT; and
3. Report to Council on the implementation, dissemination, and continued relevance of this Recommendation no later than five years following its revision and at least every ten years thereafter.