Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
2012 to introduce more stringent emission limit values for emissions to the atmosphere of
particulate matter (the significance of which we will note when we look at black carbon
and climate) and of the metals cadmium, lead and mercury. The emission source categories
for the three heavy metals were also extended to the production of silico- and ferroman-
ganese alloys, thus expanding the scope of industrial activities for which emission limits
are established. These measures are to be achieved by the use of best available techniques.
Back to POPs again. The CLRTAP was not an ideal instrument under which to deal
with these substances. The convention is nested within the United Nations Economic Com-
mission for Europe (UNECE), which, as mentioned previously, has a geographic scope that
is restricted to Europe, all the states of the former Soviet Union, Canada and the United
States. Inotherwords,itdoesnothaveaglobal reach, although withtheexception ofChina
and India, it does have the potential to include a substantial proportion of the world's man-
ufacturing capacity and unintentional emissions. However, it was a wonderful start, and we
must remember that back in 1990, no other international organisation with legal teeth was
interested.
From the hindsight of history, the big achievement of the protocol was to pave the
way for a global approach to control these substances. The advent of the 1992 Earth Sum-
mit and its associated Agenda 21 provided UNEP with new tools to achieve international
cooperation for the management of such chemicals as POPs. The most important was the
establishment of UNEP Chemicals, a new organisational unit based in Geneva.
The next few lines illustrate the pedantic machinery of how things are done in UN
circles, but it also shows how the machine can be a racing car in the right circumstances.
At the last preparatory meeting for the 1992 Earth Summit, Iceland succeeded in introdu-
cing the need for global action on POPs into Agenda 21. However, the text appeared in
chapter 21 (“Oceans”) rather than in chapter 19 (“Toxic Chemicals”). At the March 1995
Reykjavik preparatory meeting for the 1995 Washington Conference to establish the Glob-
al Plan of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-Based Activit-
ies, Iceland delivered a science synthesis document derived from the CLRTAP POPs state
of knowledge report and from the POPs section of an interim assessment report produced
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