There is momentum at the global and regional levels for wider adoption of pollution registers. In 2001, the environment ministers of the G-8 countries—large industrialized democracies who meet regularly to discuss major economic and political issues—committed to promoting compatible pollution registers. They agreed that these registers should include core chemicals like persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals, and ozone depleting chemicals.

Pollutant registers have garnered international interest since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. As part of a broader call for public access to information, the Rio Principles—endorsed by all the nations attending the conference—specifically mention access to information on hazardous materials. Agenda 21, also adopted at Rio, urges countries to adopt chemical inventories based on a community’s “right to know.”

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) took up this call in the mid-1990s. Through a series of workshops involving NGOs, businesses, and national governments, OECD prepared guidelines to help governments construct pollution registers, and encouraged its 30 members to establish such registers and share their experiences in implementing them.

At the same time, regional organizations have begun to develop pollution registers as well. In the mid-1990s, the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation started publishing an annual “Taking Stock” report, which tracks trends in pollutant releases in Canada and the United States (and Mexico, when its new pollutant register starts generating data). The European Union is also pursuing a multinational register, the European Polluting Emissions Register, which will begin reporting data in 2003. This new register will include greenhouse gases, but does not yet track toxic chemicals contained in waste.

A significant and ambitious advance in the adoption of pollution registers came in January 2003, when a broad coalition of countries completed negotiations on a binding “PRTR Protocol” under the Aarhus Convention (see Box 1.7). In May 2003, 36 nations and the European Union signed the PRTR Protocol—the most significant expansion of mandatory disclosure requirements to date (UNECE 2003c; 2003a). Nations ratifying the treaty, which was negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, commit to establish compatible registers that report pollution emissions and transfers of a core list of 86 pollutants. The protocol suffers from many of the weaknesses of other pollutant registers, including a relatively small list of pollutants and the public’s limited ability to demand expansion of the list. In addition, it includes a provision whereby companies may claim some emissions as “confidential,” barring information on these emissions from public release (ECOSOC 2000; European ECO-Forum 2003; UNECE 2003b).

However, the treaty also contains some progressive elements. Its pollutant list includes greenhouse gases, a number of pesticides and toxic metals, and even some chemicals shown to disrupt the human endocrine system. In addition, it demands emissions reporting from companies involved in a wider range of activities than do many current pollution registers. For example, it includes the energy sector (except the nuclear power industry), as well as intensive livestock and fish-farm operations (European ECO-Forum 2003; UNECE 2003b:1–2).

While the primary focus of the PRTR protocol is still large, concentrated point sources of pollution—such as individual factories and power plants—it also provides a framework for reporting on pollution from diffuse sources such as motor vehicles, agriculture, and small- and medium-sized businesses that usually escape reporting requirements (European ECO-Forum 2003; UNECE 2003b:1–2).