Thursday, September 19, 2019
From the 8th to 13th September 2019 the international scientist community and policy makers met in Krakow, Poland at the 14th International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant (ICMGP 2019).
Under the theme of the ICMGP “Bridging knowledge on global mercury with environmental responsibility, human welfare and policy response”, the Executive Secretary of the Minamata Convention, Rossana Silva-Repetto, delivered a plenary lecture on how the implementation of the Minamata Convention requires valuable inputs from the scientific community. She focused on the importance of integration and implementation of emerging and future mercury research into the policy making.
At this conference, the Minamata Convention secretariat presented an analysis of the national priorities from the Minamata Initial Assessments (MIA). In order to assist the countries in identifying priority areas in the implementation of the Minamata Convention, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) supports the development of these assessments that are very helpful in identifying the capacity-building and technical assistance needs.
Currently, there are 39 completed reports available on the Convention website, of which 27 countries became parties during the implementation of their MIA. The main national priorities described in MIA reports are phasing-out mercury-added products (Article 4) and waste management (Article 11). Other major priority areas include artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM, Article 7), emissions (Article 8), releases (Article 9) and monitoring (Article 19).
During the following months further analysis will be done as more initial assessments become available. The results of the MIA analysis will be utilized to prepare the development of the capacity-building and technical assistance programme for 2020-2021. They will also form the basis of the Specific International Programme and other related activities.
Poster presentation
The Minamata secretariat also shared a poster about developing technical guidance for the implementation of the Minamata Convention, that in its COP3 will review aspects related to mercury-added products (Article 4 – Annex A), manufacturing processes (Article 5 – Annex B), releases (Article 9 - list of relevant sources), mercury waste (Article 11 - thresholds) and contaminated sites (Article 12 - Guidance).
The third meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention will take place from 25 to 29 November 2019 in Geneva, Switzerland. More information can be find on its website.