UNEP Governing Council Touts Successes - Mercury Included

The UNEP Governing Council / Global Ministerial Forum held last week in Nairobi was successful on many fronts. As reported last week in Hg-ATME, the 140 governments settled on a voluntary program to reduce the use of mercury in our industries. This despite an overwhelming majority of the nations present supporting an international legally binding agreement. With US, Canada and India leading the opposition the voluntary program will go into effect for the next two years and the issue will be revisited at that point.

Consensus on a global scale is a difficult thing to acheive. I would have felt better if the US and Canada were leaders on the other side of this debate, but small steps internationally are to be applauded. The Press Release on the UNEP site summarizes the accomplishments of this years forum. An excerpt follows;

An enhanced programme to reduce health and environmental threats from toxic mercury pollution was agreed by 140 governments at the close of an international gathering of environment ministers. The decision includes developing partnerships between governments, industry and other key groups to curb emissions of the heavy metal from power stations and mines to industrial and consumer products. After two years, governments will gauge its success and reflect on whether the voluntary initiative has worked or whether negotiations should commence on a new international and legally-binding treaty.
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Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said: The mercury decision, along with ones on water, municipal waste and monitoring the state of the global environment to technology support and capacity building for developing countries under the Bali Plan, underlines a new determination by environment ministers to rise to the challenges of our time. For too long environment ministers have met and spoken but their collective voice has not been loudly and decisively heard in the world. This, I believe has changed at this 24th session of the UNEP Governing Council, he added. Mr. Steiner said the new momentum was partly driven by growing global concern over the impacts of globalization and climate change and partly by a new understanding, cemented at the meeting, of the economic importance of natural or nature-based assets.

I can only hope the voluntary programs work, but if they do not, I also hope the ministers can show an even greater determination and put a binding agreement in place. Let's not understate the real success that is going on here. Environmental issues are global issues and having a forum like this start to tackle these issues globally is the right way to go.

The 16 decisions, including the one on mercury, came after five days of discussions against the backdrop of United Nations reform and the request of governments and the Secretary General to deliver as one.

It also came against the backdrop of growing momentum among nations to dramatically improve international environment governance including strengthening UNEP as the global authority and environmental pillar of sustainable development.

Mr. Steiner said it was therefore significant that governments agreed to increase UNEPs core biennium budget from $144 million to $152 million.