Persistent Organic Pollutants and Heavy Metals (Including Mercury) - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 142

The Symbiotic Relationship Between Emerging Science
and International Negotiations for Controls on POPs
and Heavy Metals
Returning to our topic, we had reached the stage where the CLRTAP had asked its task
forces on POPs and heavy metals to provide the convention with state of knowledge reports.
On the basis of these reports, the convention would decide whether to launch negotiations
forinternationalcontrolonthereleaseofthesesubstancestotheenvironment.Thefortuitous
creation of AMAP provided a unique opportunity to identify what circumpolar information
would be vital to support the CLRTAP process and to coordinate the collection and synthes-
is of such information. The first part of this task (collecting high-quality information in the
Arctic) took much effort and organisation, and as a result, AMAP was not able to directly
contribute to the information synthesis before the CLRTAP 1994 deadline. However, it did
so indirectly because the scientists who were taking part in AMAP's setting up of circum-
polar monitoring capabilities now found themselves and their work feeding directly into the
CLRTAP POP and heavy metal syntheses. Several delegates to the AMAP working group
(including me) also sat on the CLRTAP task forces on heavy metals and POPs.
In early 1994, we sat down at a meeting in The Hague and began to prepare the
CLRTAP state of knowledge report on POPs. It was at this stage that I first met Ramon
Guardans from Spain. Ramon is a remarkable polymath. In addition to leading the drafting
of several key sections of the report, he subsequently launched a personal crusade: to raise
awareness of POPs in the Mediterranean hinterland in Europe and North Africa and to in-
crease the monitoring capacity of POPs in this region. He was successful on both counts and
has continued to be very active at the interface between science and international pollution
agreements, particularly with the later global Stockholm Convention we will soon explore.
What critical circumpolar information was collected and synthesized in the report? You
could organise the answer according to three fundamental questions.