The “Zero Mercury Working Group”, held the seventh Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee (INC 7) on Mercury, on 31 March 2016, in the Dead Sea, Jordan. The negotiations were held in preparation for the first meeting of the Conference of Parties, after the Minamata Convention enters into force.
The group’s main priorities for INC 7 were related to how to best monitor mercury reductions at the national level through the Convention’s control measures and implementation framework. In particular, the data submitted by the Parties regarding the measures undertaken and their effectiveness are vital to understanding the impact of the Convention, determining compliance, ensuring accountability and enhancing donor interest in supporting the Convention — both now and into the future.
INC 7 saw progress on several fronts.
Article 3 – Mercury supply sources and trade
One of the group’s top priorities for INC 7 was to ensure that countries collect and provide mercury production and trade information in a timely manner.
The guidance on completing the trade consent forms required was provisionally adopted at INC 7. ZMWG sought instructions requiring that the trade consent forms be provided to the Secretariat, to facilitate a better understanding of mercury trade flows when the forms are aggregated.
The guidance as adopted “recommends” that Parties submit these forms, Moreover, the reporting form under development requests that Parties either submit the trade consent forms or provide “other suitable information” to demonstrate compliance with the trade provisions (Paragraph 6) of Article 3. Taken together, the group said “we think its likely most (if not all) Parties will find it easier to simply submit the trade consent forms”.
The draft guidance on the identification of stocks and sources of mercury supply was also provisionally adopted at INC 7. Under the guidance, Parties may aggregate mercury (and the covered mercury compounds) stored by the same entity at different locations, for the purpose of determining whether the size of the stocks meets the Convention thresholds for “large” stocks. . Although examples of supply generation sources are not provided, the guidance stills contains questions countries may ask themselves regarding their potential supply sources, thus these questions can serve a similar function to the list.
Article 7 – Artisanal and Small Scale Gold-mining (ASGM)
The draft guidance on Parties developing national action plans (NAPs) to reduce the use and release of mercury in ASGM was recommended for immediate use by countries. This development is important because countries are already working on developing NAPs, so the sooner the NAPs can be completed and implemented the better. ZMWG welcomes the INC 7 decision to use the ASGM Guidance document considering that emissions from this sector are the largest in the world.
Article 8: Emissions
INC 7 provisionally adopted four separate guidance documents to implement Article 8 of the Convention. The four guidance documents cover: (1) The best available techniques/best environmental practices (BAT/BEP) for controlling major point sources; (2) setting emission limit values (ELVs); (3) demonstrating regulated sources encompass at least 75% of emissions from a source category; and (4) developing and maintaining emission inventories. As we suggested, the inventory guidance recommends that it include information on monitoring and measurement techniques, an important element which needs to be known to assess emission reductions over time.
Article 10 – Storage of mercury
The road-map proposed by the secretariat towards developing guidance on interim storage of mercury for consideration at COP21 was revised as we requested, establishing a process for the secretariat to develop the guidelines that now includes Parties and NGOs, and participants in the UNEP Global Mercury Partnership. ZMWG is happy to see that a wide pool of Minamata Convention experts and stakeholders will be nominated as experts, and that drafts of the guidance will be open to public consultation for feedback.
Article 12: Contaminated Sites
With the support of many developing countries, several attempts were made to reach agreement on having the interim secretariat develop guidance on contaminated sites for COP 1. After much debate, the compromise reached was to request the interim secretariat to compile country submissions and prepare a roadmap for developing the guidance to be considered at COP21.
ZMWG was disappointed with this result since it prolongs development of the guidance, adding “we fully support the development of draft guidance for contaminated sites as important capacity building assistance to facilitate necessary site remediation”.
Article 13, 14
Financial resources and mechanism including the Specific International Programme (SIP). A Memorandum of Understanding between the Conference of the Parties (COP) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) was provisionally adopted to address financing matters, as the GEF Trust Fund is the main financial instrument for the Convention. To meet accountability requirements, it was provisionally agreed by the INC that the GEF will report to the COP information related to the Convention including: how GEF has responded to COP Convention guidance; a synthesis of approved projects on mercury indicating how resources were allocated; GEF monitoring and evaluation activities; and providing an explanation in the event that a project proposal was not approved.
Progress was also made towards the development of a Specific International Programme (SIP), which is an additional Convention financial assistance mechanism designed to primarily support capacity building and technical assistance in developing countries and countries with economies in transition. It was agreed that UNEP will deliver administrative support to the SIP. Elements such as its duration, governance arrangements, and resources, were discussed but not resolved. Text will be forwarded to COP1 for further discussion.
Article 21- Reporting
The group also added that “reporting was our top priority for this meeting, considering that information will be needed to evaluate mercury reduction progress and the effectiveness of the Treaty”, adding “although the reporting form is not yet completed, we made substantial progress in securing the data needed on mercury production and trade, and on mercury use in industrial processes.
Still left to be resolved are issues related to reporting on air emissions, including whether emission inventories will be provided or made available, and the frequency of reporting. There was significant discussion at INC 7 about a four year general reporting cycle, with more frequent reporting (every 1 or 2 years) for mercury production and trade.
Article 22 – Effectiveness evaluation
In order to assist the COP, the INC 7 requested the interim secretariat, in consultation with relevant stakeholders, to draft a report with recommendations on the establishment of arrangements for providing comparable monitoring data on the presence and movement of mercury and mercury compounds in the environment as well as trends in levels of mercury and mercury compounds observed in biotic media and vulnerable populations, as provided for in paragraph 2 of article 22, including references for assessing baselines. In addition, the secretariat will compile information on existing monitoring programmes including baseline information and (b) prepare for COP21 a road map for developing a draft Convention effectiveness evaluation strategy.
ZMWG is pleased to see the planning process underway, involving a wide array of experts and sources of information feeding into the development of the effectiveness evaluation strategy. We had hoped for an expert group to work on the broad array of technical and policy issues embodied in this work, but look forward to becoming actively involved in the road-map development.
Still unresolved are several elements under the COP Rules of Procedure, Convention financial rules, key aspects of the financial assistance mechanism, reporting on air emission control measures and reporting frequency generally, and the host arrangements for the secretariat.
Depending on how much progress is made in the interim, a short INC8 may take place before the COP1 to resolve remaining matters.
Technically, the final road map is almost in place to ‘zero down’ global mercury use. Zero Mercury Working Group looks forward to a productive first Conference of the Parties meeting that establishes an effective Convention operational framework for achieving significant mercury reductions.
