Latin American Countries Come Together for Experience Exchange

From June 1-3, 2022, the Latin America Regulatory Cooperation Forum (LARCF) hosted a two-day event to exchange information and progress toward sound management of chemicals across the region. LARCF has been front running with events and cooperation partnerships in Latin America, bringing together more than 100 regional industry members.

In the Virtual Annual Meeting, attendees learned more about the steps, challenges, and implementation of diverse instruments across several countries. To summarize a few, the meeting addressed the following:

• Colombia's fresh chemical framework implementation and the support from the National Industry Association (ANDI) in the development of chemical policy.
• Chile’s recent chemical regulation and chemical classification process aligned with their policy implementation.
• Insights from the chemical management in Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), including a regulatory convergence proposal.
• Peru’s chemical proposal has been updated and this indicates that it will soon be submitted to the executive power and there will be additional chemical efforts regarding international chemical instruments implementation.
• Past and future work performed by the Intergovernmental Network on Chemicals and Waste for Latin America and the Caribbean, aligned with United Nations Environment Programme support.
• Further capacity building and activities performed together with Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICAM) and United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) – tools, documents, and training programmes.

Latin American countries are aware of the importance of chemical instruments to trade, environment, and safety. Such meetings are crucial to strengthening management implementation and cooperation in the region.

It was also announced that LARCF plans to publish guidelines for chemical prioritization later this year, besides the Roadmap for Sound Management of Chemicals and Chemical Inventory Guidelines published in April 2021 and March 2022, respectively.