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on the chronic health and environmental effects of many POPs, including those involving
endocrine disruption. We will come back to this later.
The third doorway provided by both agreements requires parties to periodically re-
view their effectiveness (Article 10 of the POPs protocol and Article 16 of the Stockholm
Convention). This feature was not in the original draft of the Stockholm Convention. It
arose from uneasiness of Canadian indigenous peoples' organisations. They were unhappy
that MEA lack independent verification to prove that countries are living up to their ob-
ligations. I was very sympathetic to this notion but agreed with the lawyers that an inde-
pendent verification scheme would never be accepted for this type of agreement. The more
I thought about it, the more I realized what really mattered was not whether a country was
“cheating” but that levels of POPs were going down. We would only know this if we had a
global monitoring capability (which wouldprobably showwhere any“cheating” wasgoing
on anyway). It was not initially welcomed in Canada, but Anne Daniel (Canada's most ex-
perienced lawyer at the time for environmental agreements) immediately embraced it and
the indigenous peoples' organisations were supportive. I prepared a proposal that was in-
troduced at the second negotiating session. It was built around the logic that the convention
needed a way to measure whether it was being effective in driving down the levels of POPs
in the environment. It was not an easy sell, mainly because of cost implications, but even-
tually, it became Article 16 of the convention. Bo Wahlström from the Swedish Chemic-
als Inspectorate was temporarily working at UNEP Chemicals and organised several work-
shops to see how comparable global monitoring data could be obtained and analyzed. In
2006, I was asked to prepare drafts of a global monitoring plan (a short strategic document)
and of an implementation plan that was designed to evolve as monitoring activities grew.
The drafts were modified between the third and fourth conferences of the parties before be-
ing adopted and the first effectiveness evaluation was completed in 2009. However, rather
than being a true evaluation, it basically set out a baseline for the future detection of trends
in POPs levels in people and the environment.
At the heart of the environmental parts of the effectiveness evaluation are periodic re-
ports prepared on a regional basis by Regional Organization Groups (ROGs), which draw
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