The Continued Need for CHEMRAWN within IUPAC: A Personal Account by Leiv K. Sydnes
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t the General Assembly (GA) in Paris in July 2019, the IUPAC Bureau recommended to Council that CHEMRAWN should be dissolved. This led many to question ‘What is the purpose of the CHEMRAWN committee?’ and perhaps this can be seen most easily through what it has done and continues to do within its role in addressing topics relevant to the UN’s sustainable development goals.
As the readers of this publication of course know, IUPAC celebrated its centenary in Paris last year. After having been active in the union in various capacities for almost 30 years I was indeed looking forward to the grand event. But the feeling of anticipation disappeared when I learnt that CHEMRAWN—the IUPAC Committee on Chemical Research Applied to World Needs—could cease to exist at the end of 2019 depending on the decision of Council. To me, serving both the presidential succession of the Union (2002-2007) and as Chair of CHEMRAWN for two periods (2008-2015), this caused significant dismay. Therefore, to make the IUPAC membership aware of what was going to be proposed at the GA, I took the initiative to write to all members of the Union and tell them what was about to happen. I was therefore not surprised when NAOs and delegates approached me and asked a number of questions before and after the GA. In fact, I still receive questions; not only that, it is clear that some people are not aware of the committee’s work and so after some reflection, I decided to write this article.
IUPAC, CHEMRAWN, and the SDGs CHEMRAWN was established through an active process in the middle of the 1970s, with the purpose of engaging IUPAC more in societal issues and focus on serving “as an international body and forum for the gathering, discussion, advancement, and dissemination of chemical knowledge deemed useful for the improvement of man and his environment.” [1] When this quote from the CHEMRAWN Terms of Reference is compared with the text of the more recent United Nations (UN) documents related to the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is clear that IUPAC, through CHEMRAWN, focused on and discussed many of these goals and associated challenges several decades before the UN. It is really impressive to look at the themes covered by the CHEMRAWN conferences (Box 1) and see how widely they have addressed the 17 SDGs that were adopted by the UN in 2015 (Fig 1).
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Chemistry International
April-June 2021
With this as a backdrop, it would have been expected that the CHEMRAWN committee would become involved when IUPAC seriously started to address how to respond to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals first and then explore IUPAC’s role in achieving the UN SDGs at the World Chemistry Leadership Meeting (WCLM) at the GAs in 2013 and 2015. That did not happen. The former topic was developed by a committee comprised of members from the Committee on Chemistry and Industry (COCI), the Committee on Chemistry Education (CCE), the Inorganic Chemistry Division (Div. II), and Fabienne Meyers supported by President Mark Cesa [2], the latter by President Natalia Tarasova, and members from COCI, CCE, and the Division on Chemistry and the Environment (Div. VI) [3]. No presentation dealt with CHEMRAWN’s achievements related to, for instance, green chemistry, greenhouse gases, herbal drugs, and water management, which became central topics at both meetings. It may be that many in IUPAC are unaware of the CHEMRAWN’s history and expertise in these areas, but I hope this article helps to spread the information that CHEMRAWN has a strong history in addressing existing and emerging world needs, and is ‘open-for-business’ to continue discussions, work in partnerships, and facilitate action in these important matters. One person that was speaking at the 2015 WCLM, was the current Vice President of IUPAC, Javier G. Martinez, who gave an excellent lecture entitled “The Chemical Element: How Chemistry is Key to Solving our Global Challenges.” However, CHEMRAWN and its contributions in this area were overlooked, according to my notes, and also in the later follow-up article “The Role of Chemistry” [4]. Since it was not normal practice to overlook CHEMRAWN in an IUPAC setting [5], this experience was disappointing because what was emphasized to be important to be successful in contributing towards the SDGs, is an integrated part of the CHEMRAWN approach and has been for decades. One example is the statement that “the collaboration between policy makers, the scientific community, and other stakeholders is critically important, and requires careful attention” [4]. Yes, indeed, that is why CHEMRAWN conferences include scientists, representatives from a range of industrial branches, research councils, international organizations, funding agencies, and politicians even at a ministerial level and as such, CHEMRAWN conferences have been unique IUPAC events. There are of course challenges in conducting such events when people from different environments come together. A politician will have a very different
