Artisanal miner panning for gold in Choluteca, Honduras. Small-scale gold mining is a leading cause of mercury pollution. Credit: Thelma Mejía/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Oct 7 2013 (IPS)

A new international convention opening for signatures this week will for the first time offer an agreed-upon roadmap by which to significantly decrease the global use of mercury while offering stronger safeguards for both human health and the environment.

Environment and public health groups are hailing the treaty, a legally binding agreement known as the Minamata Convention on Mercury, the text of which was agreed to in January by 147 countries following four years of negotiations. Proponents are now calling on governments to move quickly to ratify the accord after it opens for signatures, on Wednesday during a four-day summit in Japan.“This is something we’ve worked on for over a decade, so it’s quite an amazing moment." -- Michael Bender of the Zero Mercury Working Group

The convention will come into effect following ratification by 50 countries, though several key parts of the agreement will only be enforced at the end of this decade or even later.

“Overall, this is a really positive step – while we would have liked to have seen a stronger section on health, just having health language in what was considered an environmental treaty is an achievement,” Jane Cohen, a researcher in the Health and Human Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“We see mercury exposure in this setting as a critical threat to children’s and women’s health, as well as a major issue around access to information. It’s a prime example of environmental degradation impacting directly on human lives.”

The Minamata Convention (named for the Japanese city that is the site of the worst modern mercury poisoning) will now lead ratifying countries to phase out – and, by 2020, to ban – the use of mercury in a range of consumer items, including certain batteries, light bulbs, medical devices, dental fillings and vaccines. It will also tackle mercury pollution at its two most common sources, small-scale gold mining and coal-fired power plants.

Indeed, it is due to these latter two sectors that the new convention’s effects will likely be particularly pronounced in developing countries. While most industrialised countries have reduced their use of mercury in recent decades, developing economies have seen a steep rise in the toxic metal’s use.

“This is the first time we’ve seen these kinds of protections in a convention, so in addition to requiring real, implementable steps, it also brings much-needed attention to this issue for governments,” Cohen notes.

“Any country that has small-scale gold mining must now have a national action plan to look at alternatives or ensure worker and environmental safety – countries won’t be able to just ignore this convention. In addition, some of the worst forms of this sector’s use of mercury – such as burning it – will be banned outright.”

According to estimates released earlier this year by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), since 2005 mercury emissions have doubled in small-scale mining operations in Africa, Asia and South America. Today, Southeast and East Asia alone account for around half of global mercury emissions, put down to the regions’ rapid economic growth in recent years and rising gold prices.

No alternative to cooperation

International talks on the dangers posed by mercury began in earnest early last decade, and by 2003 countries had struck an initial agreement that the substance deserved to be considered a global pollutant warranting immediate international action. But it took another half-dozen years for serious negotiations, a process that was given new momentum by President Barack Obama’s election in 2008.

As a senator, Obama had urged the U.S. government to enter into negotiations towards a binding international mercury standard. After his election to the presidency, Obama was able to oversee an about-face in U.S. policy on the issue, a change that proved to be a catalyst for other countries, including China and India.

Simultaneously, many industrialised countries were already ratcheting down their own use of mercury, both for consumer and industrial purposes. In late 2011, the U.S. government unveiled strict new standards for mercury emissions from power plants, seen as one of the most important environmental victories of Obama’s first term.

“This is one of the compelling reasons why countries like the United States and other developed countries have moved to adopt the treaty, because they’ve already taken significant steps to phase out their use of mercury,” Michael Bender, a founder and international coordinator for the Zero Mercury Working Group (ZMWG), a network of groups in 50 countries, told IPS from the sidelines of the Japan summit.

“This is something we’ve worked on for over a decade, so it’s quite an amazing moment. No single country can solve the global mercury crisis – while there are alternatives to most products and processes and there are controls for most major sources, there is no alternative to global cooperation.”

Mercury, which can remain in natural environments for years, attacks the nervous system and has been proven to be particularly debilitating for unborn babies and children. According to new research released last week by the ZMWG, mercury levels in many human communities could be far higher than anticipated.

Looking at hair samples of women of childbearing age from nine countries, researchers found that nearly a quarter exceeded a widely accepted safety limit for a certain type of mercury set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Further, higher findings appear to correlate with higher consumption of fish and seafood, with 71 percent of women in Japan, for instance, exceeding this limit, followed by 64 percent of women in Spain.

While Bender expresses satisfaction with the Minamata Convention’s imminent passage, he and others have expressed concern over the agreement’s timeframe.

A new article he co-authored for the Journal of Public Health Policy warns that the convention “is slow to address major sources and uses of mercury. Coal-fired power plants constructed after the Convention enters into force are not required to install controls until 5 years later, with existing facilities given 10 years … Moreover, missing from the Convention are steps to eventually end mercury use in” small-scale gold mining.

Still, Bender and the ZMWG are now turning their attention to encouraging the convention’s timely ratification. They’re hoping to get the required 50 ratifications by 2015, and Bender says he’s optimistic that goal will be met.

“One good indication is the great number of environment ministers showing up here [in Japan], a dozen and a half from Africa alone,” he says.

“We also understand that a significant percentage of countries in the European Union are coming. Between the interest being demonstrated in Africa and the E.U. alone, we feel quite confident that the momentum for this international agreement will continue to build.”

By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jan 21 2013 (IPS)

The international community has adopted a binding treaty for reducing emissions of mercury, a poisonous heavy metal that harms human health and the ecosystems on which life depends.

Uruguayan diplomat Fernando Lugris chairing the Minamata Convention on Mercury negotiations. Credit: Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Uruguay

The Minamata Convention on Mercury, which sets out to control and reduce products and processes using the metal, was approved on Saturday Jan. 19 by representatives of over 140 governments. It will be signed in Japan in September and will enter into force once 50 countries or more have ratified it.

Mercury is a neurotoxin affecting the central nervous system and the brain. It also damages the kidneys and other body systems such as the respiratory, gastrointestinal, haematological, immunological and reproductive systems.

The provisions of the treaty agreed in Geneva prohibit production, export and import of some products containing mercury with effect from 2020, including certain types of batteries, fluorescent lamps, soaps and cosmetics, and non-electronic medical instruments like thermometers and blood pressure monitors.

The convention does not ban elements for which mercury-free substitutes are so far not available, like vaccines where mercury is used for preservation, and uses of mercury in religious or traditional activities.

The negotiations for the Minamata Convention on Mercury, named after a city in Japan where serious health and environmental damage occurred as a result of mercury pollution in the 20th century, were chaired by Uruguayan diplomat Fernando Lugris, backed by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner and UNEP experts.

In an interview following the adoption of the treaty, Lugris, who brought four years of negotiations to a successful conclusion, told IPS he was very satisfied by the agreement.

Q: How would you sum up the progress that has been made?

A: I think we have reached a high level of ambition in which regulatory measures, especially to limit mercury emissions (in) to the air, soil and water, are really ambitious. We will be able to achieve very significant global reductions.

Q: What kinds of emissions are specified in the text?

A: The treaty does not seek to reduce natural emissions, because mercury is an element that exists naturally on our planet. Instead, we are trying to limit anthropogenic emissions generated by the use of mercury in man-made products or processes, and we are seeking substitutes to replace it.

Q: Will the convention affect countries’ economic situations?

A: Basically, the treaty seeks not to impose limits on (individual countries’ economic) development, but to orient them towards sustainable development so that, in the future, processes and products will be free of mercury; that is, we seek sustainable substitutes for it.

Q: Representatives of NGOs have criticised the text of the treaty. In their view the measures do not go far enough to reduce global emissions of mercury, and might even produce an increase in mercury pollution.

A: I believe civil society has to raise its voice and demand that governments make greater efforts, and this convention is an important starting point. Yesterday, there was no binding treaty for the international community. Now we have one.

However, this effort could be strengthened by future actions, through the evolution of the convention itself at the conferences of its parties.

Q: During the negotiations, did you have difficulties with the North-South division that is a feature of most multilateral debates?

A: For some issues, the North-South divide continues to exist. However, in other aspects, we perceive the world is already changing. Atmospheric emissions are a clear example, where countries like China and India are the biggest emitters because of their use of coal-fired power plants (the top source of mercury emissions).

But the United States and the European Union are big emitters too. And it was very clear that in the discussions over air pollution reduction, the negotiated package gradually took shape between the big polluters.

Q: Were you aware of any other grouping of countries during the negotiations?

A: Yes. In discussing release of mercury into water, we found the developing countries, especially in Africa and Latin America, had clearly similar realities, and their greatest need is to seek cooperation and to help vulnerable populations.

Q: How did the group of countries from Latin America and the Caribbean fare with their initiative on health?

A: The GRULAC (Latin American and Caribbean Group) clearly sought to introduce health as an issue throughout the convention, and the agreed text basically contains many measures for health protection.

The group also insisted on the need to include a specific article on health. In principle, the industrialised countries felt that an article on health was irrelevant in an environmental agreement.

However, Latin America’s persistence and its clear interest in protecting human health succeeded in getting the final session of the plenary to agree on an article specifically about health.

Q: Does the approved text provide for funding for the protection of human health?

A: As the convention will have a financing body to support its implementation, clearly the measures taken will have a positive effect on the protection of human health.

Above all it should be underlined that human health, in relation to mercury pollution, is not protected solely through the enforcement of specific measures to that end, but control of atmospheric emissions (in general) is the most important action to preserve human life.

Q: At the last minute countries like Canada, France and the United Kingdom rejected a proposal from Bolivia to include a reference to indigenous populations in the text. How did that debate go?

A: The international community has clearly formulated this issue through the (U.N.) Declaration on (the Rights of) Indigenous Peoples, which is a non-binding agreement, but unfortunately at the level of binding agreements there are still some countries that oppose making specific reference to native peoples . This is not the case in Latin America.

Q: What is your opinion on this?

A: Latin America supports the declaration on indigenous peoples and makes clear reference to the collective rights that were recognised in this declaration, which was in fact adopted in Geneva, having been introduced in the General Assembly session by the representatives of Peru, with the support of Uruguay.

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