 While the Kunming-Montreal agreement sets out to reduce pollution risks and negative impacts by at least half by 2030, the official agenda of the current COP16 meeting doesn’t include a single debate on chemical pollution. Credit: UN Biodiversity It is estimated that around 25% of all animal and plant species are currently threatened, with one million species already on their way to extinction, the IPBES report found. The biggest drivers are climate change and habitat reduction, but pollution was also identified as one of the five main threats in the report. Chemical pollution is a constant stressor, Sigmund said. Adapting to chemical exposure might leave organisms unable to adapt to other environmental changes, like higher temperatures or a different water pH, which are both consequences of the climate crisis. Additionally, those climate-fueled environmental changes can alter the toxicity of chemicals. “Chemicals are really at the center of this triple planetary crisis of pollution, biodiversity and climate change,” Therese Karlsson, science and technical advisor for the non-profit advocacy group International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN), told EHN. However, “while we do have an understanding that the influence is there, to pinpoint which specific pollutants are linked to specific declines in biodiversity has been difficult,” Ksenia Groh, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, told EHN. “There are a lot of effects happening which we do not yet fully understand.” From agriculture to cosmetics,it is estimated that industries produce and use more than 350,000 artificial chemicals, with around 13,000 used in plastics,according to the UN. But there is little to no evidence of their potential impacts on the environment, Sigmund said. In fact, “less than 1% — 128 of 13,000 chemicals — of the chemicals used in plastics are currently regulated under existing international multilateral environmental agreements,”according to IPEN. To add a layer of complexity, there’s no inventory on where, when and how much of these chemicals are released in different ecosystems. “There are a lot of effects happening which we do not yet fully understand.” - Ksenia Groh, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology So, while climate change researchers have specific variables — such as temperature increase in an environment — this mixture of pollutants and the lack of information on where they are and their potential harms create a messy landscape for researchers. And “for those that we know that do cause harm, the effects can have many, many different faces, so to speak,” Sigmund added. The few links between pollution and biodiversity loss are usually published in a “notably low number of scientific journals” specialized in ecotoxicology, where papers about biodiversity loss are rarely found, researchers found ina paper analyzing the absence of chemical pollution research in biodiversity conservation. As a result, chemical pollution research is siloed and isolated, which “stands in marked contrast to the publication patterns for climate change, habitat loss and invasive species,” the authors wrote in the paper, which was published in Nature Ecology and Evolution. The science-policy dialogue on chemical pollution faces similar issues, the researchers added. There is no universally acknowledged authoritative scientific body on chemicals, and international efforts are fragmented into several international conventions: Basel, which regulates the movement and disposal of hazardous wastes; Rotterdam, which promotes cooperation in the international trade of hazardous chemicals; Stockholm, which aims protect human health and the environment from the effects of persistent organic pollutants; and the Minamata Convention, which regulates the mercury trade.
“Ambitious but not realistic”
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