1. 1 Cooperation and Coordination among the Basel, Rotterdam & Stockholm Conventions

2. 2 History… Ad-hoc Joint Working Group (AHJWG) set up by similar decisions adopted by Stockholm COP2 (May 2006), Rotterdam COP3 (October 2006) and Basel COP8 (December 2006) AHJWG composed of 45 members – 9 from each regional group – 15 from each Convention

3. 3 …History… Three meetings were held in a 1 year period. – Helsinki, March 2007 – Vienna, December 2007 – Rome, March 2008 Participants were: – Nominated members to the AHJWG – Resource persons, in order to assist the AHJWG

4. 4 …History In between meetings intersessional work was done by the AHJWG participants with inputs from other contracting and observer Parties and United Nations (UN) entities. Most of the meeting documents were prepared by participants AHJWG members During the AHJWG work process a Web-site was setup to promote transparency (http://ahjwg.chem.unep.ch)

5. 5 Guiding Principles Respect for the legal autonomy of each Convention Form follows function Country driven process Responding to needs of developing countries and countries with economies in transition Strengthening international cooperation Promoting programmatic cooperation Adopting a step-by-step approach Avoiding additional bureaucratic layers

6. 6 Outcome Recommendation has been adopted by the Basel COP-9 and Rotterdam COP-4 Recommendation to be put to the Stockholm COP-4 for adoption Interim period to start after COP-4

7. 7 I.Organizational issues in the field A.Coordination at the national level B.Programmatic cooperation in the field C. Coordinated use of regional offices and centres

8. 8 II.Technical issues A.National reporting B.Compliance/Non-compliance mechanisms C.Cooperation on technical and scientific issues

9. 9 III. Information management and public awareness A.Joint outreach and public awareness B.Information exchange/clearing ‑ house mechanism on health and environmental impacts C.Joint input into other processes

10. 10 IV. Administrative issues A.Joint managerial functions mandate to the Executive Director of UNEP and the Director General of FAO to establish a joint management involving the Executive Secretaries of the 3 Conventions mandate to the Executive Director of UNEP and the Director General of FAO to explore and assess the feasibility and costs of joint coordination B.Resource mobilization C.Financial management and audit functions D. Joint services resource mobilization service financial management and audit legal service information technology information and public awareness

11. 11 V. Decision-making A.Coordinated meetings B.Extraordinary meetings of the Conferences of the Parties – The extraordinary COPs of the 3 Conventions to be held back to back with UNEP Global Ministerial Environmental Forum in February 2010 C.Review arrangement

12. 12 Final co-chairs’ thoughts… Confidence- and trust-building exercise through the 3 meetings while exploring unchartered territory A country-driven, bottom-up, step-by-step process All the members engaged in preparing the meeting documents Along the way, the AHJWG became part of the whole discussion on International Environmental Governance, becoming a concrete example of cooperation and coordination to be followed by other MEAs