Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
malaria control, and although the use of DDT had dramatically fallen from earlier years,
this was (and still is) because of aggressive mosquito resistance to the pesticide. However,
it was not necessary to get into a technical debate. Sheila quickly told the floor that the
Inuit would not be a party to any agreement that threatens the lives of others. She could not
believe that a mother in the Arctic should have to worry about contaminants in her milk as
she feeds her baby - just as she could not believe that a mother in Africa should have to
rely on the very same chemicals to protect her baby from disease. There must be another
way. Sheila's intervention immediately brought peace to the room and we moved on.
Two people with very complementary personalities supported Sheila throughout her
work on POPs. Stephanie Meakin is a very capable biologist with a charming personality
whosenaturalinclinationistounfailinglybelieveinthebestofanotherperson.TerryFenge
is a political analyst specializing in Arctic affairs. He has always reminded me of Plato's
famous evaluation of Socrates as being the gadfly that stings a government into action. In
this role, he has often been very effective in Canadian Arctic affairs.
Therewerefivenegotiatingsessions:MontrealinJune1998;NairobiinJanuary1999;
Geneva in September 1999; Bonn in March 2000; and Johannesburg in December 2000.
All the sessions were scheduled to run over five days. As was the case with the CLRTAP
protocols, information on the Arctic POPs situation packaged by AMAP was constantly
being introduced - often by countries far from the Arctic and sometimes by delegations
from the tropics. The final session began as usual at 10 a.m. on Friday and finished at 7.30
a.m. on Saturday. We had lost interpretation a few hours earlier, but John Buccini and Jim
Willis coaxed us on, and in the end, the job was done. On May 23, 2001, the convention
was signed by an initial group of 91 countries and the European Union. It entered into force
on May 17, 2004, with ratification by an initial 128 parties and 151 signatories. By March
2013, 178 countries had ratified the convention and had therefore become parties (meaning
their acceptance of the legal obligations of the convention). It is now known as the Stock-
holm Convention. At the time of writing, one Arctic Council country has not ratified either
the Stockholm Convention or the CLRTAP POPs protocol.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search