Meeting the objectives of international environmental conventions and agreements related to chemicals and wastes : internship at UNEP’s GEF Chemicals and Waste Unit

In order to support the development and management of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) chemicals and waste projects within the framework of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), I carried out multiple tasks in the UNEP’s GEF Chemicals and Waste Unit under each of the following five core duties: ‘Under the direct supervision of the respective Units' Programme Officer/unit head, the intern will: 1.Collect, compile and analyse information related to the sound management of chemicals and waste, particularly on: •Review of environmental and health hazard, exposure and risk related to toxic chemicals and waste; •Review of technologies and alternatives for reducing emission and release of chemicals and waste; •Review of national policies, capacities and needs; 2.Assist in developing and implementing projects to provide technical assistance and capacity building services to developing countries for the sound management of chemicals; 3.Assist in organising international meetings related to sound management of chemicals and waste, including drafting meeting documents, communicating with participants, supporting logistic operations; 4.Assist relevant Programme Officers/unit heads in maintaining the external and internal communications of the Chemicals and Waste Sub-programme; and 5.Perform other duties on Chemicals, Waste and Air Quality programme as requested.’ In this report, I will only discuss a few of the tasks in more detail: the analysis of communication strategies of the project on polychlorinated biphenyls in the southern African development community, the execution of procurement cases, and the development of an Africa Programme on circular chemicals economy. These tasks can mainly be found under duty 1 and 2. For this first task, I had to compile and analyse the planned communication strategies on polychlorinated biphenyls in countries of the southern African development community. Furthermore, I created a presentation of this analysis that aims to help improve these strategies by showing how they could better contribute to the other components of the project (e.g. legislation or environmentally sound management of PCB containing equipment in service). For the procurement cases, I had to help select a vendor for the disposal services of POPs for different projects by following the installed procurement process. I reviewed the provided data of the possible vendors for the different stages in the process and drafted the memos on the results of the selection process. I also created a guide on this procurement process for new team members. To support the development of an Africa Programme on circular chemicals economy, I carried out an analysis on country priorities, gathered baseline information, supported the design of the concept document and presentations, mapped waste facilities, reviewed terminals evaluations, etc.