CIEL serves on secretariat at successful opening session of global mercury treaty negotiations

Stockholm, 6-11 June. CIEL senior attorney Glenn Wiser gave essential support to the United Nations Environment Programme mercury secretariat to ensure a successful first session of the intergovernmental negotiating committee (INC) to develop a global, legally binding instrument on mercury. Engaging in formal mercury treaty negotiations for the first time, governments from every region of the world discussed all dimensions of the mercury challenge and how the global community might respond.

Mercury is a toxic substance of global concern that causes significant harm to human health, wildlife and ecosystems.

As a member of the mercury secretariat, Mr. Wiser provided legal, policy, and strategic advice and analysis throughout the INC session to UNEP, governmental delegates, and the INC Chair, Fernando Lugris. This included devising a mandate-unanimously adopted by the INC-that requests the secretariat to prepare a draft text of treaty "elements" upon which the INC can base its negotiations at its second session in January 2011. This will be a crucial step towards achieving the goal of completing and adopting the new mercury treaty by 2013.

According to the comments of many participating governments, much of the INC's success was due to the quality of the meeting documents that the secretariat prepared. CIEL wrote six of these, including some of the most important, presenting options for the treaty's structure, substantive provisions, compliance system, and financial mechanisms to assist developing countries.

The greatest human-derived sources of mercury pollution are from the burning of fossil fuels, artisanal small scale gold mining, various industrial processes that use mercury, and mercury-containing wastes. When mercury is released to the environment, it travels with air currents and then falls back to earth, sometimes near its original source and sometimes far away. Mercury in the aquatic environment can be transformed into a highly toxic form, methylmercury, which can bioaccumulate and biomagnify in fish and, in turn, in birds, mammals and people who eat them. Human embryos, fetuses, infants, and children are particularly vulnerable, because mercury can permanently impair their neurological development.