October 11, 2013
Washington, D.C. – In Minamata, Japan, a city whose residents still suffer the devastating effects of mercury pollution from the 1960s, 92 countries have signed a new global treaty to address mercury pollution. The Minamata Convention on Mercury reflects a global consensus on the threat posed to human health and environment by mercury contamination and the recognition that this threat must be confronted. The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), like many around the world who have called for effective action to combat mercury pollution, celebrates this critical milestone and urges the signatory countries to move quickly to ratification and early implementation of the Convention.
The Minamata Convention makes important strides to address the growing levels of toxic mercury released into our environment, with irreversible and often severe effects on human health. The treaty bans new mercury mines, phases out existing mines, and includes provisions for the safe handling and disposal of large mercury stockpiles. The Convention also includes requirements for prior informed consent and safe management for mercury exports and imports, and sets concrete timelines for the phase-out of many mercury-containing products (such as compact flourescent lightbulbs) and processes (such as chlor-alkali bleaching). All of these measures represent valuable and much needed progress in the global fight against mercury contamination.
Despite this progress, however, there are important areas in which the Minamata Convention falls far short of what is needed. “The Minamata Convention leaves wide discretion for individual countries to set their own approaches, targets and timelines on key provisions,” said Baskut Tuncak, staff attorney for the Environmental Health Program at CIEL. “This wide discretion leaves serious gaps and loopholes with respect to the most significant sources of mercury contamination.” The most notable of these loopholes is the lack of concrete targets or timelines for eliminating mercury pollution from gold mining operations or coal-fired power plants–the two biggest sources of mercury contamination worldwide. “Whether the Minamata Convention will prove a watershed moment in reducing the mercury threat, or a regrettably missed opportunity, will now rest in the hands of individual Parties themselves. We urge them to use this treaty as a foundation for meaningful and immediate action to eliminate mercury risks, and not as an excuse for continued inertia and limited ambition.”
“Perhaps what is most telling about the limitations of the Minamata Convention,” Tuncak continues, “is that while it represents a critical step in addressing the global threat of mercury contamination, it took four years of intense negotiations to get there. Mercury is only one of thousands of toxic pollutants that contaminate our environment, our food, and our bodies. We need to ask ourselves: can humanity afford the thousands of years it would take for similar processes to address every dangerous chemical individually? Or is it time for us to consider a more comprehensive approach to managing toxic risks?”
For background information on global treaties for chemicals and waste, see: Paths to Global Chemicals Safety: The 2020 Goal and Beyond (CIEL/SSNC 2013), available at: https://ciel.org/Publications/Paths_GlobalChemSafety_Mar2013.pdf
Further information and interviews:
Washington, D.C.:
- Marcos Orellana, Senior Attorney & Environmental Health Program Director, morellana@ciel.org
- Baskut Tuncak, Staff Attorney, btuncak@ciel.org
Geneva:
- David Azoulay, Managing Attorney, dazoulay@ciel.org