27 November 2007
Mercury Back on the Agenda
Most countries support a legally binding approach to control Mercury pollution. This is the main conclusion from the first meeting of the Open Ended Working Group on Mercury held in Bangkok, Thailand, 11-16 November 2007. This may be accomplished through an amendment to the Stockholm Convention or as a separate treaty. Intercessional collaboration will struggle with this challenge during the coming year.
The first meeting of the Open Ended Working Group on Mercury was held in Bangkok, Thailand, 11-16 November 2007. Glenn Weiser of CIEL who made the Study on the different options, for UNEP, presented a report the different options of legally binding instruments, existing and new for NGOs.
A majority of countries The EU, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, Brazil, the African region, the CEE region and many countries of the Asia-Pacific and Latin America as well as the Arab countries expressed their support to a legally binding approach and preference to the creation of a protocol to the Stockholm Convention or a new free-standing treaty.
After eight hours of negotiations (until 3.00 am) there was an agreement on the work to be done until October 2008. The agreed text on the Intercessional work can be found here.
More can be found on the Zero Mercury website