Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
mary of the former, together with socioeconomic and technological information relevant to
potential international controls.
Another quick little digression about working with UN organisations. They have a
reputation for endless formality and bureaucracy. It is true, but the criticism is partly unfair
because it comes from internal mechanisms designed to protect the national sovereign in-
terests of all countries. However, for a while, lucky organisations have a secretariat headed
by a resourceful individual who can respect impartiality while also cutting straight through
the tangled webs of diplomacy. Their teams take up their talents, but when they leave, the
versatility vanishes so quickly. Such was the case with Lars Nordberg, who even managed
to enliven our lives with a keen sense of humour. The first CLRTAP POPs meeting was
also the first UN session I chaired. Within an hour, we were in chaos when Lars saved the
day by whispering in my ear: “Perhaps it is time for a little coffee break”!
The task force on POPs and the task force on heavy metals were now faced with gath-
ering and assessing as much information on environmental contamination in the Northern
Hemisphere by POPs and heavy metals as we could get our hands on. We knew we would
expose huge data gaps, but if we were swift, perhaps some of them could be addressed in
time to be included in our reports to the CLRTAP. It was a perfect opportunity for the emer-
ging AMAP. Fortunately for us in Canada, our new NCP funding base enabled us to not
only find out what was going on in our Arctic but to also participate in international part-
nerships through AMAP to design and carry out circumpolar research and monitoring that
could feed into the CLRTAP process.
Before returning to the POPs story, I want to take a few paragraphs to describe how
we designed the NCP. A little earlier, I mentioned the BEMP. It was a large interdisciplin-
ary project watching over a then-unique oil and gas exploration effort in the Beaufort Sea.
It was unique because industry was working in an offshore pack ice environment from ar-
tificial islands in winter and drill ships in summer. By today's standards, the BEMP was
very well funded. An environmental assessment and review had essentially concluded that
hydrocarbon exploration and production could be safely undertaken in the Beaufort off-
shore, providing that the enormous list of environmental issues identified was comprehens-
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