GENEVA (AP) — More than 140 nations adopted the first legally binding international treaty on Saturday aimed at reducing mercury emissions, after four years of negotiations on ways to set limits on the use of a highly toxic metal.
The treaty was adopted after all-night negotiations that followed a week of talks in Geneva, United Nations environmental officials and diplomats said. A signing ceremony will be held later this year in Japan, and then 50 nations must ratify the agreement before it comes into force, which officials said they expected to happen within three or four years.
“To agree on global targets is not easy to do,” Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, said at a news conference. “There was no delegation here that wished to leave Geneva without drafting a treaty.”
The treaty will for the first time set enforceable limits on emissions of mercury, which is widely used in chemical production and small-scale mining, and exclude, phase out or restrict some products that contain mercury.
“We have closed a chapter on a journey that has taken four years of often intense but ultimately successful negotiations and opened a new chapter towards a sustainable future,” said Fernando Lugris, the Uruguayan diplomat who led the negotiations.
But some supporters of a new mercury treaty said they were not satisfied with the agreement.
Joseph DiGangi, a science adviser with the advocacy group IPEN, said that while the treaty was “a first step,” it was not tough enough to achieve its aim of reducing overall emissions.
For example, he said, there is no requirement that each country create a national plan for ways it will reduce mercury emissions.
But proponents of the treaty say it will set meaningful controls and reductions on a variety of products, processes and industries in which mercury is used, released or emitted.
Those would include energy-saving light bulbs, medical equipment like thermometers, and the mining, cement and coal-fired power industries.
Franz Perrez, Switzerland’s ambassador for the environment, said the treaty “will help us to protect human health and the environment all over the world.”
Mercury-Emissions Treaty Adopted
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Mercury-Emissions Treaty Adopted
