The Minamata Convention on Mercury, a global treaty designed to protect human health and the environment from the adverse effects of mercury, has released the Minamata Convention Progress Report 2022 on its latest developments.
The 2022 overview includes outcomes from the fourth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP-4), as well as the inter-sessional work towards COP-5.
“A lot of significant work, collaborations and preparations take place before and after our COPs, and this publication aims to illustrate a small but significant part of this,” said Monika Stankiewicz, Executive Secretary of the Minamata Convention on Mercury.
One of the major achievements highlighted in the report is the amendment of the Convention to ban eight additional mercury-added products, further reducing demand for mercury on the market and result in less mercury waste.
The report also covers the creation of a new open-ended scientific group by COP-4 which, operating with unprecedented transparency and inclusiveness, will provide comparable data on the presence and movement of mercury in the environment.
Another highlight is the impressive rate of over 90% of Parties who submitted to the Secretariat their first full national reports on the implementation of the Convention. This national reporting provides an increasingly clear picture of the specific needs of each of the Parties and the challenges they face.
This overview of 2022 also emphasizes the initial steps towards the first evaluation of the effectiveness of the Convention, and the expanding cooperation between the secretariats of the Multilateral Environmental Agreements.
These fruitful collaborations across fields such as gender, biodiversity and knowledge management provide a glimpse of what has been achieved and what can be accomplished together through the Minamata Convention.
Delegates from all over the world will gather in Geneva, Switzerland, for the next meeting of the Conference of the Parties, COP-5, from October 30 to November 3 2023.
For more information on past and upcoming activities, please visit the Minamata Convention website.
