Persistent Organic Pollutants and Heavy Metals (Including Mercury) - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 201

Has the Arctic Messenger Been Understood?
Has the world heard, understood and acted on the insights given by the Arctic Messenger?
As is so often the case with these types of issues, the answer is an ambiguous “Yes” and
“No”. The negotiation of the 1998 regional CLRTAP protocols on POPs and heavy metals,
of the 2001 global Stockholm Convention on POPs and of the 2013 Minamata Convention
on mercury suggest a “Yes” response. However, before we become too self-congratulatory,
we should remember how ponderous these actions have been. I think I made the first plea
to a UN organisation for action on POPs in August 1990, but it took until 1998 and 2001
for countries to agree on regional and global action (and then a number of years before they
entered into force).
The objective of all three agreements is to drive down the environmental levels of these
pollutants. It is too early to answer the question with respect to mercury, but what about
POPs?BothoftheagreementsonPOPshavestronglegalobligationstodealwithsubstances
that have proven to be POPs and that have been shown in one way or another to be causing
concern for their environmental and human health effects. These are the substances listed in
the annexes to the agreements and the lists are slowly growing. Environmental levels of sub-
stances on the original annex lists are generally decreasing due to reduced or eliminated use
and/or emissions and discharges to the environment. This encouraging news suggests that
substances more recently added to the annexes should also be expected to eventually decline
in the environment.
However, there are few (with the significant exception given shortly) strong interna-
tional legal obligations to prevent new substances with the properties of POPs entering into
use. This is left to the discretion of national regulatory processes, even though the case of
POPs has dramatically shown how we all share the same atmospheric, marine and fresh-
water environments wherever we live. Ironically, some of the substances now appearing
as candidates for inclusion on the annex lists of the POPs agreements are beginning to in-
clude the “safe” replacements for “legacy” substances on the original lists. We have already