June 2011, Central America

PRTR technical meetings were held in Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras on 13-21 June 2011 as part of a project implemented by the Central American Commission on Environment and Development (CCAD) and UNITAR, with financial support from the Government of Spain. The technical meetings brought together technical officers from the Government, NGOs and the private sector in Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras and international experts from Chile, Mexico and Spain. They worked on the successful implementation of PRTRs in their respective countries, which are already operating for approximately 10 years.

The technical officer in charge of the current design of a PRTR in Peru was also invited to contribute with Peru’s experience on this process. Experts shared lessons learned on correctly defining the scope of the national PRTR system, addressing legal implementation issues, developing data collection and management procedures and developing data analysis and data dissemination procedures.

The project supports the design of national PRTRs in these countries as a contribution to the future implementation of a regional PRTR in Central America (it would be the third regional PRTR in the world, after the EU and North American PRTRs and the first one in a developing-country context). As a result from the discussions during the meeting, countries identified a list of priority chemicals to be reported, decided on the legal status of their PRTR and designed on-line reporting systems. The next step would be a PRTR pilot trial and finally developing a proposal to be presented to decision-makers in order to implement the system. 

Along with the activities in Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras, PRTR design projects are also being implemented in Belize, Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Panama. National PRTRs that will be implemented in all countries of the region would later feed the future regional PRTR.