As prepared for Delivery
Your Excellencies, Federal Minister Steffi Lemke, Ladies and Gentlemen, dear friends – good morning, good afternoon.
“A Planet Free of Harm from Chemicals and Waste” – this is the vision that came out of Bonn last year when the 5th International Conference on Chemicals Management adopted the Global Framework on Chemicals (GFC), under the presidency of Germany and your Excellency, Minister Lemke. Thank you for your leadership.
Our mission at the World Bank is to end poverty and boost shared prosperity on a livable planet. We are allies in the global effort to use chemistry and chemicals for their good – and to fight the harm they do if not managed safely.
Many of the most important advances in our lifetimes are the results of chemistry. But the unchecked use of chemicals, material waste and chemical pollution have become a defining challenge of our century.
Our success in reducing poverty is held back by our failure to control waste. But we can no longer continue to ignore this silent environmental crisis. We must work together to turn the goals of the Global Framework into reality.
I am increasingly aware of the huge burden lead pollution imposes on economic and social development. World Bank research shows that globally an estimated 5.5 million people die prematurely from health conditions related to lead poisoning every year. In countries with low and middle incomes, children younger than 5 years lose 6 IQ points on average due to lead exposure.
These children will lose out on a chance to lead healthy, productive lives – which has dire consequences for productivity and economic growth. This is why we are committed to working in partnership towards a future free of lead poisoning.
What we can do for lead, we can do for other chemicals. We need more capacity to test and identify pollution hot spots. Governments need to know and understand the chemicals that are crossing their borders and end up as waste. We need to eliminate polluting chemicals from drinking water, food, consumer products, and the air we breathe. And we must prevent more pollution from happening again and again.
I am therefore pleased that the Global Framework on Chemicals has set up a funding mechanism with the help of Germany and other donors – the GFC Fund. This will help governments improve their capacity to manage dangerous chemicals.
At the World Bank Group, we are stepping up support for governments to assess their needs and develop legal frameworks and capacity to manage chemicals. This is fully in line with our environmental and social frameworks and performance standards.
We are promoting circular economy approaches and integrating materials management into the global climate and energy transition. And we clean up pollution where it has occurred. But cleaning up later is expensive – for our wallets, for our health and for the planet. That’s why our approach is to stop pollution from happening in the first place.
This is where the private sector, and the chemical industry in particular, come into play. We need safer chemicals. We must end the cycle where beneficial chemical innovations ultimately end up as global threats to the environment. Plastics are great, but not when our oceans are full of them.
A paradigm shift and more investment towards sustainable chemistry is needed. We must also assess how new chemicals and products behave when large quantities are produced and released to the environment. We can achieve this when academic expertise, regulatory authorities, and innovative businesses work in partnership.
In fact, partnership is at the heart of the Global Framework. It is a strength that many stakeholders participated when the Framework was agreed. It is a strength that we are all gathered here today to move this important agenda forward.
It is clear – we need a coalition for action. And for that, you have my full support. I wish the 3rd Berlin Forum and your deliberations much success.
