Environment ministers from around the world will meet Feb 13-15 in the Caribbean city of Cartagena, Colombia, to fine-tune their preparations for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Rio+10), to take place in South Africa in August. Under the leadership of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the ministers will discuss several proposals, including an initiative for protecting the world’s population and the environment from toxic chemicals.

UNEP has sounded the alarm that there is a tendency to shift chemical manufacturing away from the industrialized world to developing countries, where there is generally a lack of adequate safety mechanisms to handle the dangers involved in their production