‘It is so important that the people who make up that committee are not political puppets’

Last month, UN member states signed off on an agreement to launch a new panel to advise on chemicals, waste and pollution. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) says that the panel will complete ‘a global scientific trifecta’ alongside the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The bodies provide the world’s most authoritative scientific reports on the planet’s most pressing challenges, playing a key role in guiding future efforts to tackle these interlinked problems.