16 September 2008: SAICM-OELTWG (Rome, 21-24 October) and related workshop (Bangkok, 2-4 December)

Dear SAICM National Focal Points for Asia Pacific countries,

(1) SAICM OELTWG
I refer to my previous message to you on 6th August regarding the co-ordination of travel fund for the participation in SAICM Open-ended Legal and Technical Working Group to be held in Rome on 21-24 October 2008. Given the limitation of the funds for the travel support, I proposed a formula for selecting the countries to receive the travel funding. I have received messages from Bahrain, Bhutan, Indonesia, Iran, Mongolia, Nepal, Oman, Palau, Qatar, Syrian Arab Republic, Thailand and Yemen. Also I contacted the SAICM Secretariat for the recent information about the registration from Asia Pacific countries.

I heard no objection to the rough formula for allocating the places to subregions. Given the absence of agreed decision making mechanism within our region, what I can do is to try to produce a list of countries based on the list of countries that responded to my request before the deadline (originally 25 August but extended to 1 September in my later communication), and also based on a plausible reasoning. For Central Asia and North Asia, I have only heard from one country so we have one remaining place for each.

For South Asia and the Pacific Islands, the number of registered countries is the same with the number that I proposed earlier, so I selected these countries that already nominated participants. The difficulty was for the remaining two subregions. For Southeast Asia, Indonesia and the Philippines responded before (or just after) the deadline, but Malaysia contacted me at a later stage. Here I would have to base my decision on the timeliness of the response, and I include Indonesia and the Philippines in the list. Consideration will be given to Malaysia depending on the availability of additional resources, but these three countries may wish to co-ordinate between themselves to modify this arrangement. (Note that Thailand is already included in the list as our representative to QSP Executive Board).

For West Asia, I have heard from five countries (Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Syrian Arab Republic and Yemen) whereas we only have two places. So my decision is to include Yemen as it is one of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), and leave one more place to further co-ordination. The four countries may wish to co-ordinate among themselves and contact me with any agreement. If I don't hear from you soon (say, by Tuesday next week), I will decide on the selection on one (or more) additional country.

From the reasoning I described above, the list of countries that I submitted to the SAICM Secretariat is the following;
- Bhutan
- Indonesia
- Iran
- Kiribati
- Mongolia
- Nepal
- Palau
- Philippines
- Samoa
- Sri Lanka
- Thailand
- Yemen
- One more from Central Asia
- One from North Asia
- One more from West Asia (Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Syrian Arab Republic)

I hope that you all understand my difficult situation where I was requested to produce a list of countries in the absence of decision making mechanism. I will further consult with the Secretariat about the availability of funding.

If you find any problem about the arrangement described above, please let me know by Tuesday 23rd September. Especially I will await nomination from Central or North Asian countries, and any news about co-ordination within Southeast Asia and West Asia. If I don't hear from Central or North Asia by that date, I will redirect the funding to other subregions.

(2) Informal Workshop on Stakeholders' Information Needs on Chemicals in Articles/Products
By now you should have received a message from the UNEP Secretariat about an Informal Workshop on Stakeholders' Information Needs on Chemicals in Articles/Products to be held in Bangkok, Thailand, 2-4 December 2008. Related information can be found at:
http://www.chem.unep.ch/unepsaicm/cheminprod_dec08/default.htm

The UNEP letter requests you to submit a registration form to me by 6 October if you are interested in participating in the Workshop. I will need to do a similar exercise of producing a list of nominated countries again.

In order to do this I would expect hearing from you as early as possible, prefarably with information as to who you nominate as a participant and how she/he could contribute to the discussion at the workshop (eg presentation on country situation, etc).

Best regards,
Esak

Eisaku Toda
Asia-Pacific Regional Focal Point for SAICM
E-mail:saicm@iges.or.jp