Nucleonics Week

NEW UNSCEAR WORK CYCLE STALLED BY UN ENVIRONMENTAL AGENCY

 

            The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), which was to have begun a new work cycle May 6-­10, has been forced to make emergency arrangements to hold even one full meeting of its 21-country members this biennium (2002/03) "because our funds have been slashed by UNEP," the Nairobi-based UN Environment Program, without a word of warning and in contravention of UN General Assembly instructions, a committee member has told Nucleonics Week.

 

            This effectively sets back its schedule by a year, delaying among other things UNSCEAR's much-awaited updated scientific assessment of radiation-related health effects of the 1986 Chernobyl accident. This will now be issued in the fall of 2006, rather than a year prior to the 20th anniversary of the disaster, as had been planned.

 

            Over the years since it was set up by the General Assembly in 1955, UNSCEAR has become the most authoritative international scientific body on radiation risk to humans and the environment. Radiation safety standards and international organizations - notably the IAEA, International Commission on Radiological Protection, International Commission on Radiation Units & Measurements, and the World Health Organization - draw directly from its assessments of natural and man-made radiation effects.

 

            By convention UNSCEAR works in four- to five-year cycles. At the end of each cycle its annual report to the General Assembly is accompanied by a series of comprehensive scientific annexes on issues of the day, based on analysis of worldwide scientific research. The committee discusses the documents as they develop, and specialist consultants engaged to write them are instructed on how to proceed during the annual meetings. These are attended by national representatives, as well as by (usually) 60-80 scientific advisers from the 21 countries, covering specialties including radiation protection, health physics, radiobiology, animal and environmental research, genetics, and epidemiology, at no extra cost to UNSCEAR.

 

            The scientific annexes are published for use of governments, the international scientific community and the public. The last cycle produced 10 annexes which were published as UNSCEAR 2000. One (annex 11, on Hereditary Effects of Radiation) was held over and issued as the 2001 report. On receipt of it, the General Assembly commended the "wider knowledge and understanding of the levels, effects and risks of ionizing radiation ... with scientific authority and independence of judgment” that UNSCEAR had provided in its 46 years. It called on UNEP to "continue providing" financial support for UNSCEAR.

 

            At its last full meeting, April 23-27, 2001, UNSCEAR decided to develop eight annexes in this cycle, in addition to that on Chernobyl. For that one, procedures are already in place to collect all research data produced in the three republics - Belarus, Russia and Ukraine - most affected by the accident. The annex's tentative titles are, in the physical sub-group: Dose Assessment for Inhalation of Radon; Medical Radiation Exposures; Exposures from Natural, Man-made & Occupational Sources; and Radioecology; and, in the biological subgroup, Epidemiological Evaluation of Radiation-induced Cancer; Epidemiological Evaluation & Dose Response of Diseases other than Cancer; Mechanisms & Consequences of Radiation Response in Tissues; and Bystander Effects, Genomic Instability & Novel Aspects of Apoptetic Response.

 

- 2 -

 

            “These were presented to the General Assembly and received its approbation, but UNEP seems to have other ideas", a committee member said. UN funding for UNSCEAR has been routed through UNEP since the two bodies moved out of New York in the 1970s. This means UNEP must transmit UNSCEAR's financial forecasts to New York, and include the funds in its own budget. Nucleonics Week was told by members that UN funding had always been modest but adequate. But it became less so, they said, since UNEP took over the purse strings. As of this year, the axe cut into the bone and "made it impossible for the committee to function properly," they said.

 

            UNSCEAR budget figures, for the first two fiscal years of the penultimate cycle, show $1,220,800 for FY-92/93 and $928,600 for FY-94/95. For the first biennium of the FY-02/03 cycle, the figure is $674,000. An urgent appeal to UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer, by UNSCEAR office bearers for this cycle, failed to obtain the additional $65,000-$70,000 requested. So the officials - Joyce Lipsztein (Chair, Brazil), Lars-Erik Holm (Sweden), Yasuhito Sasaki (Japan), Robi Chatterjee (Canada), and Committee Secretary Norman Gentner - decided to cancel the first full meeting of the cycle, scheduled for May, pool the savings with 2003 funds, and convene a full meeting in January 2003.

 

            "We see this as an ad hoc measure, and still hope against hope for fresh funds that would enable a second full meeting next year," Gentner told Nucleonics Week. If it were possible to hold a second meeting in 2003, we may be able to get back close to schedule, but most members of the committee seem resigned to accepting that we've lost a year and want to focus on efforts to ensure that it won't happen again.

 

            "We need, at least and in the short term, to get back to a budget which supports us in the way we have been functioning, that is, at one full-fledged meeting per year, every year. We would need over the longer term to increase the amount of honoraria we pay consultants, because right now they are tiny for the amount of work they are called on to put into these documents. They only do it because of the prestige of the committee. Also, we need to recruit more consultants because of the increased complexity of the issues we are dealing with. We need to recruit from further afield, so travel costs will be higher, and increasingly from academia."

 

            The budgetary problems are to be stressed in the committee's report to the General Assembly next month. Gentner said financial support had been falling away for many years, though only now had it become acute. Most disturbing, he said, was the fact that UNEP had failed even to allow UNSCEAR the opportunity to provide inputs when the budgets for FY-00/01 and FY-02/03 were being formulated.

 

            National representatives are becoming more forthrightly critical of UNEP. In a letter to the journal Science, dated July 19, Zbigniew Jaworowski (Poland), said the funds provided to UNSCEAR were "lean but adequate," though 2002 funding stands at about 50% of the 1992 level, not accounting for inflation.

 

            Saying he cannot understand why the UN accepts "a threat to UNSCEAR's very existence," for want of what amounts to an annual pittance, Jaworowski added. “It appears to me that the fiscal difficulties began when UNSCEAR financing was arranged via UNEP”. "A divorce of UNSCEAR from UNEP might be a possible remedy. Dissolution of UNSCEAR would be an immeasurable loss to world science and to future development of the radiation protection system."

 

-Gamini Seneviratne, Vienna