Pact to curb mercury is rejected
February 25, 2005
World governments have concluded an agreement on reducing production and use of the toxic heavy metal mercury.
It came at the biennial meeting of the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) Governing Council in Nairobi.
The agreement stops short of setting up a legally binding global treaty, as the European Union had advocated.
Instead, it calls on member countries to establish "voluntary partnerships" to reduce the damaging impacts of mercury pollution.
It also mandates Unep to pursue various avenues of further research, including a project to document mercury use in much greater detail than has been done before.
Mercury is a naturally occurring metal released into the environment from rocks and soils, and in volcanic eruptions. But human activities, including mining, industry and power generation, are continually adding more.
About 70% of mercury emissions of human origin come from the burning of coal and the incineration of waste materials.
And once in the environment, this pollution can travel long distances.
Quick action
The discussions in the Kenyan capital brought together two opposing views on how to tackle mercury.
One bloc, led by Norway and Switzerland and supported by member states of the EU, argued that a binding treaty would be the most effective way to reduce production and use.
This was opposed by the United States and its allies, which advocated instead the "voluntary partnerships" approach - although the precise nature of these partnerships between as yet undefined groups of governments, international organisations such as Unep or the World Bank, and industry has yet to be worked out.
The meeting's final document makes it clear that the US vision had won; the concept of a global treaty is there, but only in the context of an option which might possibly be considered in the future.
"We were able to convince the EU, Norway and Switzerland that we need immediate action," the leader of the US delegation, deputy assistant-secretary for Environment, Claudia McMurray, told BBC News.
"We can get started on this quickly, whereas agreeing a treaty could take years; but we do have other language saying we will look at this again after a period of time."
Binding regulations
For environmental groups, this is not the only reason why the US opposed a global treaty.
"The US government is due to finalise new regulations on its own power stations next month," Felice Stadler, a director of the US-based Mercury Policy Project told BBC News.
Coal-fired power stations are the biggest source of mercury within the United States, accounting for around 40% of US production.
"They are basically re-writing sections of the Clean Air Act," claimed Ms Stadler.
This interpretation was backed up by a source within the US government's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
This source told BBC News that the agency's leaders wanted to avoid a binding international set of regulations because it would restrict their room to regulate US mercury emissions.
The EPA published a draft set of regulations, the Clean Air Mercury Rule, in January 2004; a mandatory 60-day public consultation period followed, during which the agency received more than 680,000 responses - the most it has ever received on any issue.
Most criticised the draft regulations for being too lenient, according to the BBC's source.
Further information can be found on the BBC News site.
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