Report from the NGO meeting on global mercury strategies 11 November 2007 and the first UNEP Open Ended Working Group(OEWG) on Mercury , 12-16 November 2007, Bangkok, Thailand.

NGO meeting on global mercury strategies, 11 November 2007

Twenty five NGOs from 18 countries from around the world participated at the NGO meeting, organised by EEB/Zero Mercury Working Group, in Bangkok, in preparation for the first OEWG on mercury.

During the meeting the state of the world on mercury was presented to bring everybody up to date, as well as the position of the NGOs until now, and our proposals to the Governing Council in February 2007. Glen Wiser, CIEL, author of the Study on the different options, for UNEP, presented us the different options of legally binding instruments, existing and new.

Discussion followed between the NGOs and on the basis of the above we decided on 6 common points which the NGOs would need to push through to the governments during the meeting. The general feeling was that if governments tried to discuss different control measures and what policy option could be better for those to be implemented, this would be quite complicated and confusing. The NGO points agreed were the following:

First OEWG meeting on Mercury, 12-16 November 2007

The OEWG started on Monday 12 November. John Roberts (UK) was elected as chair. A 5 member Bureau of the OEWG was created (including the chair) with representatives from all regions (Mexico, Belarus, Japan, Nigeria).

The NGOs had been pushing for a discussion to take place horizontally on the different options – legally binding and voluntary –in view of narrowing down mainly the legal ones, into two – a protocol to the Stockholm Convention or a new free standing treaty. At the end the agenda was decided to follow the 7 priority areas (atmospheric mercury emissions, waste containing mercury, mercury demand-uses, mercury supply and primary mining, environmentally sound storage of mercury, contaminated sites, increase of knowledge in inventories, exposure etc) and the different control measures that could be taken under each priority area, and then a discussion on through which instrument these control measures could be implemented.

On the basis of that, the different control measures that could be added under each priority areas were discussed, and whether a voluntary or a legal approach would better suit each one was discussed by the governments.

The updated list of control measures as these were discussed in plenary and contact groups can be found here including section 4.7 on information. NGOs were also able to suggest additions which were accepted if supported by a country – all of the NGOs suggestions were included in the list.

Overall, on the implementation options, US, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and China supported voluntary approaches for all control measures. Canada agreed to this line as well but was somehow more open also to existing legal approaches –mainly the Basel and Rotterdam Conventions. 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.

Finally governments entered into negotiation over what would be the intersessional work for UNEP secretariat in preparation for the Second OWEG foreseen to take place in October 2008.

Four proposals were tabled on what the intersessional work should have been:

1. by the African Region, supported by Norway and Switzerland
2. by the EU, mainly along the lines of the African proposal with minor differences
3. by Australia and New Zealand
4. by the US

In addition the US submitted a proposal for a Voluntary Framework to address global mercury risks.

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 Intersessional work can be found here.

Governments requested mainly UNEP to:

1. provide information on how different financial mechanisms (GEF, Multilateral fund of the Montreal Protocol etc.) would apply on a New protocol to the Stockholm Convention on mercury, a new free-standing treaty and  on voluntary arrangements, and what is the funding currently available to address mercury;
2. further analyse implementation options through which countries could pursue a new free-standing treaty, a new protocol to the Stockholm convention and voluntary arrangements;
3. regroup the control measures within each strategic objective of each priority according to 4 clusters (inventories and knowledge building, BAT/BEP and product/standard restrictions, financial considerations and capacity building , and technology transfer) , indicating at the same time which of the control measures can be implemented at national level (considering countries’ capacity to do so), and which would benefit from a coordinated international framework whether through legal or voluntary arrangements.
4. carry out different studies on: qualitative analysis of costs and benefits fir each of the strategic objectives, including information on the socioeconomic costs of continuing the status-quo, assessment on whether projected appropriate demand could be met if primary mining was phased out , and preparing an updated paper on major mercury containing products and processes that have effective substitutes.

Finally a draft report was produced from the meeting, additions/corrections were made in plenary and this will be submitted to the 10th Special Session of the Governing Council, February 20-22, 2008, Monaco.

To conclude, our main objective to narrow down the options of implementation instruments to a New protocol to the Stockholm Convention and a New free-standing treaty was met; the fragmented approach of tackling different issues through different existing legal instruments was chosen not to be considered, although Canada seemed to be pushing towards that direction – although isolated. The analysis of a voluntary arrangement still stayed on the table however for further consideration. Nevertheless all approaches as discussed were looking at a comprehensive instrument which would cover measures to tackle all seven priority areas. The effort from the US to request a study on the elasticity of mercury price related to the Artisanal and small scale gold mining (ASM) sector was rejected thanks to coordinated efforts….So, some first steps were indeed made to the right direction, streamlining global solutions on mercury, but there is some way to go.

A press release was send out from the NGOs at the end of the meeting, on 16 November 2007.

NGO activities
The NGOs were meeting every morning and evening before and after the plenary session for coordination purposes. On the basis of the regional representation and language capacities NGO representatives were also attending some of the regional groups – depending on their openness. Further to that a separate meeting was set up between the NGOs and the EU, and between the NGOs and the Asia Pacific region – which brought us closer to these countries and open further channels of communication.

Three NGO side events were organised during the OEWG in Bangkok.

1.  Mercury Uses in Developing World, on Monday 12/11

• Introduction to the side event and overview of global demand by sector and region
  and
• Mercury Use in China
  David Lennett, NRDC
• Artisanal and Small Scale Gold Mining in the developing world
  Rickford Vieira, WWF Guianas/Suriname
• Mercury Use in India
  Ravi Agarwal, Toxics Link, India

2. Mercury Effects on human health, on Tuesday 13/11

• Mercury Effects on Human Health, Irma Makalinao, Pacific Basic Consortium for Environmental Health Sciences, Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of the Philippines Manila

3.  The Global Movement for Mercury-Free Health Care, on Wednesday 14/11

• Faye Ferrer, Health Care Without Harm, South East Asia, Philippines 
  The Global Movement for Mercury Free Health Care
• Rico Euripidou, groundWork, South Africa
  Initiatives for Mercury-Free Health Care in South Africa
• Elena Lymberidi-Settimo, European Environmental Bureau/Zero Mercury Working Group, Brussels
  European Policies to Phase-Out Mercury in Health Care
• Ravi Agarwal, Toxics Link, India
  Fostering a Mercury-free Medical Device Industry in India and Globally

and also

NGO representatives were invited to present:

• Jack Weinberg, HCWH, on Mercury-Free Healthcare, at the US EPA - Product Partnership side event - Monday 12 November
• Richard Gutierrez , BAN South East Asia/Zero Mercury Working Group,on The Mercury Problem in Developing and Countries with Economies in Transition: An NGO Perspective at the Swiss side event on Wednesday 14 November - on Successful approaches to mercury management

All events were well attended and useful discussions/presentations took place which triggered the interest from government representatives.

Furthermore many interventions from different NGOs attending (each NGO had their own flag) were made from the floor during the plenary and many of our suggestions were supported by governments and eventually adopted by the plenary.

The NGO community with their interventions, side events and informal discussions made their presence very evident at the meeting and their input was appreciated by many governments and other inter-governmental organisations.