Four takeaways from Geneva (from Mark)

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The opportunity to attend INC5 was the most unique academic experience of my time at MIT so far. Not only was I exposed to the environmental policy-making process at the highest level, but I also got to travel overseas with an incredible group of people. I learned a ton, but here are my top four takeaways from Geneva:

Technical details don’t always matter:

Sitting in on the contact group on selected technical articles, I was surprised by how quickly we would sometimes reach the limits of technical knowledge in the room. I recall one exchange about fluorescent light bulbs. One country was advocating for an exemption of a certain type of bulbs, but when pressed on the issue, could not describe their actual use. In fact, no one in the room knew exactly what the new proposed text was referring to! It was clear that the delegate had received specific policy goals from her government, but didn’t have a complete grasp of the reasoning behind them. In the end the delegates came to a compromise concerning the technology, but I was very surprised that so much time was spent on something that no one in the room really understood.

Stamina counts:

Many important decisions were reached in the early hours of the final days of INC5, and the delegations that were present and making sure their voices were heard at that point often got their way. The ability to remain sharp, focused and tenacious throughout an exhausting week of negotiations is a big factor for whose policy view will be reflected in the text.

Compromises are reached behind closed doors:

As the week wore on it became clear that the breaks between formal meeting times, when delegates had the opportunity to meet bilaterally to discuss their positions, were when compromises were made. The large contact group meetings really only allowed delegations to lay out their positions, and to determine the areas of contention. Then, in the breaks, delegates were able to speak to one another informally in order to trade across issues silos, and come to agreeable compromise.

Capacity is a determinant of success:

George Orwell might have said of UNEP negotiations, “All states are equal, but some states are more equal than others.” Although every state has equal opportunity to voice their concerns in plenary and contact groups, there is a clear disparity in states’ abilities to effectively advocate for their policy interests. The USA, Canada, the EU, Norway, Switzerland, Japan and China routinely dominated conversations, and it is no fluke that these groups devoted significant human and financial resources to their INC5 delegations. This disparity of capacity became more evident as the week wore on. In some cases, when there were multiple contact groups working simultaneously, lower-capacity delegations could not afford to send the people in order to be represented at every discussion.

Reading back over these lessons, I recognize that they could be interpreted to deduce that I have a negative impression of the UNEP INC process. In reality, I feel quite the opposite. Although I now better understand the realities of the process, I am truly amazed at the way that so many parties with such diverse (and often conflicting) interests were able to come to an agreement. It is a slow, imperfect, and sometime torturous process, but in the end the parties were able to reach some kind of equilibrium on all the issues on the table. It might sound cheesy, but that gives me hope for the type of multi-lateral, global problems that the world will increasingly face in the future.

How to Regulate Mercury in 6 Easy Steps (Part 4): Institutions and implementation in the Final Treaty

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By: Amanda Giang and Philip Wolfe

Many moons ago, before the negotiations began, we set up some key questions about how a treaty actually works in this post. We called these questions the implementation problem: how does a treaty actually get implemented? How do we make sure that countries are actually following its provisions? How do we make sure the provisions are effective? And what does all this mean for the relationship between countries, between treaties, and between different international bodies?

Now that the negotiation is over, we can try to answer these questions for the newly minted Minimata Convention.

1.     How will the convention be implemented in practice?

While the Minimata Convention was adopted last Saturday, it won’t be officially open for signature until October, in Kumamato, Japan. Once a country has signed the convention, they will have to begin the domestic ratification process, which involves putting in place legislation that implements the treaty’s provisions.* When fifty countries have ratified the treaty, it enters into force, which means that it becomes binding by international law.While countries prepare for implementation, they will have option of preparing National Implementation Plans (NIPs). This flexible approach to implementation plans was a compromise between mostly developed countries, who pointed out that NIPs are expensive and burdensome, and mostly developing countries, who were seeking financial and technical support to better understand how to implement the treaty requirements.

* If a country does not sign the convention within a one-year period, but then would like to join, it accedes to the treaty.

2 + 3.     How can the convention ensure compliance and effectiveness? 

During the negotiation, one delegate said, “Reporting is the backbone of compliance,” referring to the importance of transparency and information exchange as a crucial incentive for following through on promises. Provisions for reporting and information sharing did not change drastically between the draft text and the finalized treaty. Reporting related to specific articles, such as supply and trade, products and processes, emissions and releases, waste and storage, and ASGM, are mandatory. Countries are also asked to “facilitate” other information sharing activities, like diffusing economically and technically feasible mercury-free alternatives to products and processes.

As many delegates noted, even if parties are complying to the treaty’s requirements, there is no guarantee that these requirements will translate into the desired objective of the treaty—to protect human health and the environment from anthropogenic emissions and releases of mercury. If everyone is in compliance, but the objective is not met, the requirements of the treaty may need to be changed. Monitoring and modelling concentrations of mercury in the environment, in biota, and in particularly vulnerable or at-risk human populations is therefore a cornerstone of evaluating effectiveness. The treaty encourages parties to cooperate on these monitoring and modelling activities, but does not mandate it. A serious remaining question then, that may be addressed in the first Conference of Parties, is whether and how much funding will be provided for these activities.

4.  How will this treaty interface with other international agreements and bodies?

The final treaty text deals with relationships to other international agreements and bodies in the preamble. The preamble recognizes that the Minimata Convention does not create a hierarchy between other international agreements, and that treaties and international bodies concerned with environment and health are mutually supportive—particularly the World Health Organization, and the Basel and Rotterdam Conventions. The preamble also makes special mention of the Rio+20 reaffirmation of the Rio Principles, with special emphasis on common but differentiated responsibilities.

During the negotiations, there was a heated debate over whether or not there should be a dedicated article for health aspects. Many countries felt that including such a section—which would focus on identifying, monitoring, providing information to, and treating adversely affected and vulnerable communities—would be out of scope and redundant given the mandate and expertise of the World Health Organization and International Labour Organization. In the end, this article was included in the text to reflect one of the key objectives of the treaty—to protect human health. However, this article recognizes the role of the WHO and ILO and calls for increased cooperation with these bodies. The article also does not require that parties undertake these health-promoting activities for affected and vulnerable populations, or set aside funding for these activities. Instead it asks that parties promote these activities.

5. How will this convention appropriately address individual parties’ conceptions of sovereignty?

These international negotiations can be thought of as a two-level game: each country is simultaneously thinking of the global sphere and its own domestic position. As such, countries are willing to sign on to the treaty if it is somehow in both its self-interest and the interest of the international community. When it came to defining a “mercury compound” in the treaty, a tension developed as countries reached for a definition that would be relevant to curbing deleterious mercury emissions and releases, but would still be broad enough as to not constrict domestic regulators. For instance, if naturally occurring trace amounts of mercury containing compounds occur in the soil of a given country, would the country be required to regulate its own topsoil? If some countries have difficulty ratifying treaties that require prior informed consent of trade, should this treaty not include prior informed consent requirements just so those countries can be party to it even if it leads to a weaker overall treaty? If this convention is able to phase-out all primary mining of mercury, will it set a precedent that could lead to the phase-out of other forms of mining in the future?

While we’ve seen some of these debates resolved, the true test of this question will come as individual parties move to sign and ratify the treaty.

Unexpected things at INC5. I never thought… (from Julie)

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By: Julie van der Hoop

My experiences in Geneva at INC5 were those I had never expected. Though we had played Leah and Noelle’s ‘Mercury Game’ to prepare us for what negotiations might be like, there were so many things that this game didn’t prepare me for.

I never thought…

… I’d be so interested in financial assistance

When I was assigned to pay specific attention to articles pertaining to financial and technical assistance, I was a bit upset. I had my fingers crossed to be in the group on Institutions and Implementation, as I thought it would be most relevant to my research. But having read up on the financial issues for this and past treaties, before I knew it I was completely enthralled. I couldn’t wait for contact groups, or to listen to countries argue over the use of ‘provide’ vs. ‘promote’ vs. ‘facilitate.’

… Scientists’ roles were “just beginning”

In a quick exchange, a delegate mentioned that the role of scientists would begin once the politics ended. Post-treaty, he suggested, science is needed for research, monitoring and reporting. I suggested that the major role we played was before the politics had begun – science identified the issues, the mechanism, the transport, etc. This interaction, along with many other experiences, really made me think about how I felt science and scientists fit in to these policy issues.

… Delegates don’t have a 9 to 5 IMG_1712

When Noelle had warned us that under pressure talks could run late into the night, I wasn’t sure how far off the business schedule we would stray. We learned, first hand, that delegates have more of a 9 to 5am, and that breaking for meals can be more of a privilege, not a right.

… I’d be able to stay up late

Most people who know me are aware of my early bedtime. I rise early, I sleep early, and I like to keep things consistent. Plenary was scheduled to end at 11pm daily, a time when I’d usually have already moved towards bed. So when it routinely went much later and was even postponed until 1:30 am, I am surprised that I made it through.

… Laugh so much IMG_1716

Whether it was the hilarity of the Swiss Breaks (cheese fires included), extended tango dancing metaphors, overuse of Queen’s Hot Space album, or our interest as graduate students to make the most bang for our buck in piling our buffet plates, I laughed a lot this trip. Yes, mercury is a serious issue and it needs to be treated as such. But taking the time to make snow angels at 2:00 am or write acrostic poems of country positions can help balance the mind, or at least keep one awake.

… I’d see Geneva!IMG_1727

I had low expectations of sightseeing, but luckily we had a chance to catch a couple of sights on the last day (after having slept a couple of hours!)

… Get twitter.

#Seriously.

 

Five things I learned at INC5 (from Amanda)

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By: Amanda Giang 

  1. I can single-handedly eat a litre of cheese if it is in fondue form.
  2. Negotiators are acting on behalf of their countries (or regional economic groups), but their success has as much to do with their own personalities as it does with their country’s position. It was really fascinating (not to mention impressive) to see how different individuals used facts, rhetoric, empathy, or in some cases, rapier wit, to broker consensus. To use a phrase coined by Rebecca Saari, I may have developed some “diplomacy crushes” over the course of the week.
  3. Is an environmental treaty ever just an environmental treaty? Issues of environment, health, and trade are so incredibly intertwined. As delegates tried to disentangle these different threads, and to figure out what the scope of an environmental treaty should be, I began to question whether or not our current international governance systems are really able to address the holistic global problems—be they global poverty, hazardous chemicals, biodiversity loss, or climate change—that we’re facing. I think there’s a role for academia to play here—as researchers, we need to better understand and communicate the integrated nature of these problems, and work from an interdisciplinary perspective. Scientists we met at INC5 like Dr. Celia Chen and Dr. David Evers serve as great models for this kind of work.
  4. Should the focus of an international environmental treaty be prevention and mitigation, or should it also address affected communities, and adaptation to existing problems? This is a question that has come up in the debate over climate change, and it also reared its head at the mercury negotiations, particularly in the discussion on a dedicated section on the health aspects of the mercury problem. I thought the final treaty text for this section, which encouraged promotion of activities to identify, treat, and care for affected communities, was a precedent setting first step towards answering this question.
  5. Thanks to Swiss hospitality (which included a fantastic Heidi-themed “Swiss Break”) and some dedicated sleuthing on the part of Phillip Wolfe, I know now that there are over ten film and television productions of Heidi, including an anime series, and a feature length adaptation with dogs playing all the major roles.

Thanks for reading and following us! If I can sneak in a sixth thing I learned, it’s that sharing this experience, and connecting with others involved in science outreach, has been a fantastic one in its own right.

 

Financial and Technical Assistance in the Final Agreement

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By: Alice Alpert and Julie van der Hoop

Financial commitments were a major concern in the final days of negotiation at INC5. In an earlier blog post, we summarized some of the key issues to be addressed. During the week, a contact group on financial and technical assistance was charged with producing articles detailing:

  • the mechanism by which countries that need help meeting their commitments under the convention could receive funds,
  • the forms of technical assistance, capacity building, and technology transfer available under the convention, and
  • the form of a committee to review implementation and/or compliance.

Discussions in this contact group highlighted the struggles between the developed global North and the developing global South. The North emphasized the need for strict regulations to protect health and the environment. The South stressed the importance of development in promoting well-being there, and the need for an approach that recognized the common but differentiated responsibilities of different countries. However, this distinction between North and South is further complicated by rapidly-developing economies such as China, India, and Brazil. These countries account for a significant and growing portion of global mercury emissions, but still stressed the need for assistance in meeting potential obligations.

Much of the negotiations on financial assistance occurred behind closed doors, in “friends of the co-chairs” meetings during the final evening of negotiations. The all-night drafting group consisted of 14 members, equally represented by developed and developing countries. The composition of the drafting group was key because this was where the hard compromises were hammered out. Early Saturday morning, this group emerged with a compromise that is included in the final treaty text.

The treaty establishes a financial mechanism, made up of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and a specific international Programme, to support developing countries in implementing actions on mercury. It states that all Parties may contribute to both the GEF and the international Programme. This is a notable provision, and this language may reflect the diverse group of donors to the GEF, some of whom are also to receive mercury-related funding (e.g. Mexico and China).  In addition to provisions on a financial mechanism, a separate article addresses Technical Assistance, Capacity Building and Technology Transfer. Technical assistance and capacity building will be provided to developing countries, while technology transfer will be promoted.

This compromise reflects elements of both developed and developing country priorities. Implementation of the convention is not strictly tied to the provision of financial resources, which was suggested by developing countries and opposed by developed countries. While an additional programme was included beyond the GEF and include new resources (a win for developing countries), funding will be voluntary (consistent with developed countries’ positions).

The final version of the text shows a masterful blend of many voices and offers every party some element of a victory. For more on the concept of “win-win” negotiations, and what it really means, see our guest post by Larry Susskind. In the final text, some statements stand alone in their own paragraphs for special emphasis, and great care has been taken in the order of concepts and their linkage or non-linkage. For example, in the article on the financial mechanism, implementation is explicitly disconnected from provision of funds. However, the article on implementation and compliance links these two ideas in saying that the implementation and compliance committee will provide “resources to meet costs in support of implementation of the Convention.” Thus, in order to be seen as legitimate by all parties, the final text is a grand compromise that also includes some mixed messages.

Personal Reflection: So…. (from Rebecca)

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by: Rebecca Saari

Sitting in my desk in Cambridge, MA, folks around me ask, “How was Geneva?” Even through the fog of jetlag, it’s clear it was an amazing, unique experience. If I had to sum it up, it was so very:

So Swiss

Both in and out of the convention center, we enjoyed the alpenhorn, yodeling, Heidi, chocolate, bakeries, fashion, fondue, history, and everything in miniature.

chocolate  miniature_town  fondue

So Cosmopolitan

On the first day, before plenary began, I remember scoping out the placards of the 140 countries in attendance. I even got to meet some of the faces behind those placards, sharing a joke with folks from Qatar, Russia, Switzerland, and the US, finding fellow plenaryCanadians, and enjoying the hospitality of the other NGOs. It was humbling practicing my French, especially around the UN interpreters, with their impressive skill, energy, and personal flair.

 

So Intellectual

I really enjoyed hopping through museums and historical buildings in Switzerland, hearing how to make the most of my time here in Cambridge, and getting reintroduced to poetry and literature by a group of MIT scientists and engineers.

So Romantic

If you can develop a “meeting crush”, then I fell hard in Geneva. I watched with admiration, as, in multiple languages and throughout all hours of the day, the chairs and co-chairs helmed a conversation that was variously plodding, meandering, or maddening with unerring grace, clarity, wit, and authority. Plus, Chair Fernando Lugris can tango.

http://www.iisd.ca/mercury/inc5/17jan.html

http://www.iisd.ca/mercury/inc5/17jan.html. Co-chair talks to delegates from India.

So Popular

Being involved in public outreach was a first. This is definitely the first time I’ve ended up in candid photos taken by journalists… in the snow, with a goat, you name it.

It was fun connecting with other folks interested in mercury, and watching our blog garner some interest. Some posts were more popular than others. Pop culture, health, animals, cool trivia? Yes. My overly technical opuses? Less so. It was a good lesson in communicating complex topics. I hope I’ve learned it; if my number of twitter followers stays in the low double digits permanently, that would be sad.

So Scientific

Science came up in surprising ways during the talks, whether it pertained to chemical compounds, units of measurement, control technology, or emissions estimation. It was interesting to hear the engineers and lawyers trade interpretations of the text – these are definitely distinct skills.

So Educational

Before we arrived in Geneva, we took a course on global environmental science and policy offered by the MIT Engineering Systems Division. In it, we played a few negotiation simulations. Our experience with the games made it exciting to watch the real delegates break into informal groups; it seemed like we were watching the real work of the meeting, and it was just like when we played the simulations in class. If you want to see what I mean, the mercury game is available online.

http://www.iisd.ca/mercury/inc5/17jan.html

http://www.iisd.ca/mercury/inc5/17jan.html

That’s all from me! Thanks for reading.

Emissions and Releases in the Final Agreement

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By: Rebecca Saari and Leah Stokes

Before the negotiations began, we wrote this post summarizing the key issues negotiators were considering for mercury emissions to air and releases to land and water. It was clear that the delegates had much to resolve. What did countries finally decide, and what does it mean? We’ll cover these questions in this post.

Countries addressed how mercury enters the environment by identifying “relevant sources” for emissions in Annex F. The text specifically identifies coal-fired plants and boilers, non-ferrous metal mining activities, waste incineration, and cement production, as sources for mercury emissions that need to be controlled. Oil and gas, facilities where mercury added products are manufactured, and manganese production, which were all included in the draft Annex F at the beginning of the week, were excluded from the final agreement.

Conversely, sources to land and water are not specified in the treaty text. Instead, it is left to Parties to identify these sources within 3 years of the Convention’s entry into force, with the help of the Conference of the Parties. In other words, this decision was left for future rounds of negotiation.

Parties must also create an inventory of their emissions and releases within 5 years the Convention’s entry into force. This is quite a long time. On the one hand, inventories can take a while. Consider that the US Environmental Protection Agency takes three years to issue updates of its National Emissions Inventory of common air contaminants. Still, many countries have been working on inventorying their mercury emissions and releases for many years, in parallel to the negotiations, so, for many countries, a five year period is quite lenient. Many countries have already completed or begun their inventories, and those who haven’t can use the UNEP Toolkit. This inventory is a critical tool for identifying sources and tracking progress. In fact, measuring emissions may be a key way that the treaty changes state behavior over time, by making emissions and releases more visible.

There’s a difference between how the treaty addresses new and existing emission sources. For new sources, parties must apply Best Available Techniques (BAT) and/or Best Environmental Practices (BEP) within five years. To manage existing sources, parties can choose between applying goals, emissions limits, BAT/BEP, multi-pollutant control options, and other measures that reduce emissions. For existing sources, measures must be applied within 10 years for existing sources of air emissions. There isn’t a corresponding deadline for action on releases, though an optional plan of action may be submitted within 4 years.

As discussed above, there are differences in the treatment of emissions to air versus releases to land and water. However, mercury mobilization, whether to the air or water, will have an equivalent fate in the long run, as explained by Helen Amos. Also, our earlier post pointed out that stricter control of air emissions might create perverse incentives to transfer mercury to the water, where it bioaccumulates in seafood and gets into our diets. The relative importance of releases vs. emissions is also an area of ongoing scientific research.

With the adoption of these articles, Parties have made some meaningful progress in policing how mercury enters our environment. The true test of the treaty’s significance and strength will come in the years to follow, as guidance is crafted and implemented. Ultimately, the treaty will need to not only control emissions and releases, but reduce them. In other words, this treaty is just the end of step one.

Crossing the Language Barrier: Interpretation at the UN

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By: Julie van der Hoop

INC5 is over, and I’ve returned home to campus. Though friends have been asking me questions about my experience, and how I got the opportunity to attend the negotiations, there has been one question that comes up almost every time: How many languages are spoken in a UN negotiation and how do you understand them?

Last week, I had the opportunity to interview Mr. Pedro-Jose Espinosa, the chief interpreter at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) headquarters in Nairobi. After post-graduate education in law and economics, Pedro moved to Geneva and switched careers. First, he worked for UN translation services, and then became involved in interpretation. “Experience in law and economics is helpful,” he said, though interpretation is often a “third level career” – one that people come to after a first or second job. Some enter immediately after attending education programs specifically for interpretation and translation but, he said, “anyone can do it.” Assuming, of course, they speak several languages.

translators

Interpreters working in the booth at INC5.

Some Basics

The UN has six official languages: English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, and Chinese. Two of these languages, English and French, are the working languages of the UN, meaning they are used in day-to-day communication. This is because the language of diplomacy has historically been French but, within the last 50 years, English has become dominant.

Any official texts, such as Conference Room Papers (CRPs), are translated into all official languages. The treaty text is likewise available in these six languages, but all references are made to the English version of the treaty. As the Legal Group works only in English, this version is the official ‘legally-binding’ text to be used in negotiations and tribunals.

This leads us to a point of clarification: translation deals with text, and interpretation refers specifically to the spoken word.

Interpretation in the Conference Center

In booths at the back of the conference room, interpreters listen to delegates as they speak into their microphones; they then interpret what is being said and communicate this back to attendees, who listen through headphones and select the language they want to hear. Interpreters derive meaning from their “passive” languages — i.e., the languages spoken by the delegates—and convey the meaning of what is being said in their “active” language.

But interpreters don’t have to know all of the official languages – at a minimum, they only need to know two. In planning an interpretation team, the chief must match up different abilities to create a working relay system. One interpreter may go from Arabic to English, and another from English to Chinese, as there may be no one on staff who can interpret straight from Arabic to Chinese. “The amount of relaying must be minimized,” said Pedro. “You don’t want it to become a game of ‘telephone’.”

Interpretation is simultaneous, meaning that the language is interpreted as the delegate is still speaking; there is no intermediate pause to allow an interpreter to convey a message. Because of how exhausting the job is, interpreters switch off in half-hour shifts, and work seven ‘half-days’ out of the ten in a five-day work week.

And on the other three ‘half-days’? “We recuperate and prepare,” Pedro said.

Preparation is key to success in interpretation: knowledge of the meeting topic is extremely important in putting things in context and being familiar with jargon. “Technical meetings are the most difficult,” both in understanding and in interpreting what negotiators are saying. For example, knowing the difference between HFCs, CFCs, or HCFCs is critical to ensure proper communication in climate change negotiations.

Challenges

The job doesn’t come without challenges. Keeping pace with a speaker can be extremely difficult when many delegates read from written statements on the floor. When people read, they speak much faster than when they are just talking, which makes it difficult for an interpreter to hear, process, and repeat the speech fast enough. Accents can also be plaguing – just consider the number of accents in English. Australian, Jamaican, and Japanese delegates all communicate on the floor in English, so an interpreter must be able to understand all of the various accents in a single passive language.

And if an interpreter is at a loss for words? “There are strategies for coping,” according to Pedro. An interpreter can continue with the speech, and fill in whatever meaning might have been lost. “Interpreting is not translating,” Pedro said. Paraphrasing is often needed as there are words and sentiments that do not have full equivalents in all languages. In the end, “it’s the message that counts.”

Minimata Convention: What happened?

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MIT Mercury team, Saturday morning celebrating negotiation conclusion!

MIT Mercury team, Saturday morning, tired but celebrating the negotiation conclusion! L-R: Ellen Czaika, Philip Wolfe, Bethanie Edwards, Amanda Giang, Julie van der Hoop, Mark Staples, Noelle Selin

Early in the morning, at 7 AM on Saturday, January 19 in Geneva, 140 countries agreed to adopt a new, global treaty on mercury. The Convention will be signed in early October in Kumamoto, Japan, and will be called the Minimata Convention, in recognition of the city in which methylmercury poisoning was identified in the 1950s.

Over the past week, we’ve covered many of the outstanding issues in the negotiations. In this post, I’ll give a brief roundup of some of the major areas of agreement. Over the next week, the teams that covered each issue will provide some more detail about the specifics in the final agreement. In addition, we’ll all be posting our individual reflections on the events of the week.

Mercury Supply, Trade and Waste

The major agreement reached in the area of mercury supply is that countries must eliminate existing primary mercury mining fifteen years after becoming a party to the Convention. New primary mining is not allowed. During the fifteen-year transition period, mercury from primary mining can only be used in certain products and processes allowed by the Convention.

A prior informed consent procedure also applies to the export of mercury.Parties must manage mercury waste in an environmentally sound manner, taking into account the guidelines of the Basel Convention.  See our earlier overview of supply and trade and waste issues for more background on these issues.

Products and Processes

The Convention phases out the manufacture, import and export of several mercury-added products by 2020. Examples include thermometers and barometers, cosmetics with mercury content above 1 part per million including skin lightening soaps, pesticides, certain lamps with high mercury content, and most mercury-containing batteries. The use of mercury-containing dental amalgam is to be phased down, with no particular date attached.

For processes, the use of mercury in chlor-alkali production is to be phased out by 2025, and in acetaldehyde production by 2018. Parties to the Convention may request exemptions from these requirements for an additional five years, with exemptions renewable once by the Conference of the Parties. For more background on products and processes, see the guest post by Hannah Horowitz on mercury in unexpected products and our background post.

Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining (ASGM)

Parties with artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) are required to reduce, and where feasible eliminate, the use of mercury and releases to the environment from this activity. National plans to address this issue are required for parties that have significant ASGM mercury use. For more on the concerns about ASGM, see our issue overview.

Health

The Minimata Convention has a dedicated section devoted to health aspects, which negotiators referred to as precedent-setting for a multilateral environmental agreement. The section encourages the promotion of activities to help populations at risk of adverse mercury health effects, and the cooperation and exchange of information with the World Health Organization, the International Labour Organization and other intergovernmental organizations. For more on the health effects of mercury, see our earlier post.

Emissions and Releases

The agreement has similar but distinct requirements for mercury emissions to air versus releases to land and water. In both cases, Parties may develop national goals, must prepare inventories, and must take some measures of control. For air emissions, the treaty identifies relevant sources as: coal-fired plants and boilers, non-ferrous metal mining activities, waste incineration, and cement production.

The agreement distinguishes between new and existing emissions sources. For new relevant sources, Parties must apply Best Available Techniques (BAT) and Best Environmental Practices (BEP) within five years of the Convention’s entry into force. For existing sources to air, parties have ten years to act, and can choose between applying goals, emissions limits, BAT/BEP, multi-pollutant control options, and other measures that reduce mercury. A similar menu of options is available for releases to land and water. Earlier, we covered the technologies that are available to control mercury emissions and some of their co-benefits and also wrote an issue overview. 

Financial Mechanism

The financial mechanism for the Convention includes two elements: the Global Environment Facility (GEF) trust fund, and a specific international programme to support capacity-building and technical assistance. The GEF is to provide new resources to meet implementation costs, guided by the Conference of the Parties to the Minimata Convention. The programme will be operated by the Conference of Parties, hosted by an existing institution and consisting of voluntary contributions.  For more details and background about the importance of financial and technical assistance, see our issue overview.