118 | December 2021 www.facs.website decomposition of ozone’ 13 . The trade issues behind the BRS Conventions had less global publicity but environmental concerns eventually led to these Conventions. The Minamata Convention will see the disappearance of mercury from the industrialised world. The Chemical Weapons Convent ion emerged from concern for disarmament within the political and legal worlds concerning the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law. In all these discussions, the knowledge and skills of chemists engaged with legal and diplomatic colleagues to resolve what needed to be done to negotiate the CWC and establish the implementation organisation, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The OPCW’s achievements were recognised with the Award of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Peace ‘for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons’ 14. It is impossible to count the number of chemists who have been involved in the development and the maintenance of these Conventions and Protocols, but they must surely number in the thousands Many of these would have come from our region across Asia and the south Pacific. On a more formal level, the international union for chemistry, IUPAC, has continuing cooperation with the OPCW, which also has a link to the Federation of European Chemical Societies (FECS). When the CWC was opened for signature in the January 1993, the FACS passed a motion of strong support for the Convention. The OPCW has been very active in developing guidelines for chemists faced with ethical issues in their professional life 15. These Hague Guidelines have received broad support within the international chemistry community. Considerable progress has been made on ridding the world of chemical weapons, but more work on disarmament still needs to be done. TheConference onDisarmament meets three times a year in Geneva and thirteen FACS countries are members of the Conference (Australia, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Korea, Turkey, Iraq, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and China). Two other FACS countries regularly send observers (Philippines and Singapore). There is no doubt that FACS chemists are relevant to the efforts of their diplomats! Additional challenges remain for science diplomacy involving chemists. The convergence of chemistry and biology poses particular challenges for controlling the emergence of new chemical-biological weapons 11. Another issue where chemists will be needed is responding to the current concern with controlling marine plastics pollution, a topic attracting global media attention 16. It is clear, as noted in the 2015 editorial already cited 7, that scientists, particularly chemists, can advance humanity in multiple ways, well beyond their obvious contribution to science and technology. ◆ Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank their colleagues Veronica Borrett, Robert (Bob) Mathews and Ian Rae for helpful discussions in the preparation of this paper and the Editor for constructive comments. Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System during “Operation Steel Box”. “Operation Steel Box”, also known as “Operation Golden Python”, was a 1990 joint U.S.-West German operation which moved 100,000 U.S. chemical weapons from Germany to Johnston Atoll. References 1. A short version of this paper was published in Chemistry in Australia. John M Webb, Thomas H Spurling and Gregory W Simpson, Chemistry in Australia, December 2020 – February 2021, p.33 2. Davis, L S and Patman RG, Science diplomacy: new day or false dawn? World Scientific 2015 3. Krasnyak O and Ruffini P-B, Science diplomacy, Oxford Bibliographies 2020 4. Flink, T. The Sensationalist Discourse on Science Diplomacy: A Critical Reflection. The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 15, 359-370 (2020) 5. Day, D, Antarctica. A Biography. Random House Australia 2012 614pp 6. https://www.ats.aq/e/secretariat.html 7. Keinan E, Diesendruck C and Reetz M https:// onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ ijch.201510013. 8. https://www.sesame.org.jo/about-us/historicalhighlights 9. I Rae and A Gabriel, Saving the ozone layer: Why the Montreal Protocol worked, The Conversation 2012 https://theconversation.com/saving-the-ozone-layerwhy-the-montreal-protocol-worked-9249. Accessed 21 April 2021 10. Robert J Mathews, ‘Chemical and Biological Weapons’, Chapter 12 in ‘Routledge Handbook 0f the Law of Armed Conflict’, Eds (Rain Liivoja and Tim McCormack), (Routledge London, 2016), pp. 212-232. 11. JE Forman, CM Timperley, S Sun and D van Eerten, Chemistry and Diplomacy, Pure Appl Chem 90(10), 1507-1525 (2018) 12. CW Timperley et al. (29 authors) Advice from the Scientific Advisory Board of OPCW on isotopically labelled chemicals and stereoisomers in relation to the CWC, Pure Appl Chem 90(10), 1647-1670 (2018) 13. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1995/ summary/. Accessed 10 May 2021 14. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2013/pressrelease/. Accessed 10 May 2021 15. https://www.opcw.org/hague-ethical-guidelines. Accessed 28 April 2021. 16. K McVeigh, https://www.theguardian.com/ environment/2020/nov/16/us-and-uk-yet-to-showsupport-for-global-treaty-to-tackle-plastic-pollution The Guardian 16 Nov 2020, accessed 6 May 2021
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDU2MA==