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In the context of Sixteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity taking place next week in Cali, Colombia from 21 October to 1 November 2024, we would like to highlight how global community is advancing the agenda to reduce and eliminate mercury and associated impacts on biodiversity. This is achieved by knowledge generation, curation, dissemination as well as on the ground transformative work.
In the small coastal town of Guapi, Colombia, Mary Luz Ante Orobio is meeting with a group she calls “the unstoppable women.”
They are gathered around a wooden chest filled with loose cash, a ledger and a calculator. Orobio flips through the ledger, eyes poring over tidy notes outlining a series of financial investments. She jots down some numbers before distributing cash among the group.
Albania, Burkina Faso, India, Montenegro and Uganda have joined forces to halt mercury pollution from the healthcare sector
Mercury harms human health and the environment
$134-million initiative will support a holistic approach to improve the management of mercury waste and the adoption of alternatives
Geneva, 14 May 2024 – The Governments of Albania, Burkina Faso, India, Montenegro and Uganda have united to combat chemical pollution today, launching a $134-million project to eliminate the use of mercury in medical devices.
Geneva—Today, as the United Nations highlights “the urgent need to address the harmful effects” of mercury added skin lightening products (SLPs) on the International Day for Elimination of Racial Discrimination on March 21, advocates are calling on governments to enforce bans and collaborate globally to end the toxic beauty trade.
As the world observes the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on March 21, UNEP in collaboration with the Secretariat of the Minamata Convention highlights the urgent need to address the harmful effects of skin-lightening mercury-containing products (SLPs).
Toxic beauty ideals are among the many effects of racism, with people worldwide too often feeling pressure to change their skin tone, putting health at risk.
The Report on activities undertaken within the Global Mercury Partnership, 2022-2023 is now available.
The Secretariat of the Minamata Convention participated in the Bern III Conference on cooperation among the biodiversity-related conventions for the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which took place from 23 to 25 January 2024 in Bern, Switzerland. The Conference was organized by the government of Switzerland and UNEP.
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Among the decisions made at COP-5, Parties defined new dates to phase out mercury-added products including cosmetics, strengthened ties with Indigenous Peoples, advanced the first effectiveness evaluation of the Convention, and reached an agreement on a threshold for mercury waste.
Read more on Minamata Convention website
It is October 2013, and Rimiko Yoshinaga is standing behind a podium in Minamata, Japan, gazing at an auditorium packed with world leaders.
Silence descends upon the room as she begins recounting how a mysterious illness had killed her father decades earlier.
Yoshinaga would learn her father was one of thousands of Minamata-area residents poisoned in the 1950s and 1960s by industrial runoff laced with mercury, a neurotoxin.
On the occasion of the 2023 International Day for Biodiversity, a new study sheds light on the profound socio-economic consequences of mercury pollution on biodiversity, fisheries and livelihoods. Mercury, a highly hazardous substance with detrimental effects on both humans and animals, poses significant risks to health and ecosystems.
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For centuries, human beings have endangered body and mind in pursuit of the toxic fallacy that pale skin represents the highest form of beauty.
Strapped together by tape and frayed ropes, wooden logs demarcate the mineshaft’s entrance, a hole in the ground no larger than a metre square.
A young man nearby cranks a lever, kickstarting some generators. The steady hum of the machinery blends with the creaking of a pulley system, drowning out the sounds of the gentle breeze blowing through the mining site, located in Paracale, north Philippines.
Gabon, Jamaica and Sri Lanka have joined forces to reduce the environmental and health toll of the skin lightening industry
$14-million initiative will support a holistic approach to eliminate mercury from skin lightening products and promote the beauty of all skin tones
Many skin lightening products include mercury, posing significant risks to human health and the environment
Eliminating Mercury Skin Lightening Products
Communication from TAUW bv
The not-for-profit Foundation of TAUW, who recently joined the Partnership, is currently calling for tenders with up to EUR 120,000 support available for individual projects that stimulate, accelerate, and (financially) support sustainable non-profit projects focused on initiatives that aim for a sustainable and valuable impact on the physical living environment, including reductions in mercury use, release, emission, and bioavailability.
Minamata Initial Assessments (MIAs) provide analyses of the national context with respect to sources of inputs, emissions and discharges of mercury and its compounds. In addition to exploring the countries' legal, regulatory and institutional frameworks, the MIAs provide a national mercury inventory using the UNEP Toolkit for the Identification and Quantification of Emissions and Releases of Mercury and its Compounds.
The Global Mercury Partnership explores ASGM and Biodiversity
Mining is not something that most people associate with Costa Rica. The country is portrayed as a land of volcanoes, rainforests, captivating wildlife and paradise coastlines. Costa Rica is also a well-known and applauded environmental model in terms of its law and regulations protecting country’s biodiversity and ecosystems.
The Partnership Advisory Group (PAG) decided at its tenth meeting, held in Geneva on 23 November 2019, to begin work on the subject of mercury from oil and gas, which it had identified as cross-cutting between different Partnership areas. In follow-up to expert consultations in April 2020, Partnership area leads agreed to oversee a process for developing a study report, with a view to better understanding how mercury can be released, in addition to how waste is treated and accounted for and how it may enter the market for other uses.
Within the project for “promoting the Minamata Convention on Mercury by making the most of Japan's knowledge and experiences”, the National Institute for Minamata Disease (NIMD), in collaboration with United Nations Environment Programme Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (UNEP ROAP), calls laboratories that undertake mercury analysis for monitoring, survey or research, to participate in a ‘Proficiency Testing’ for assessing their analytical capacity.
Five years have passed since the Minamata Convention on Mercury entered into force on 16 August 2017. Although the convention itself is young, it builds on a long history of scientific efforts to understand and manage the risk of mercury, a toxic substance.
Recognizing the sector was estimated to be a major source of mercury emissions and releases, the Partnership Advisory Group decided at its tenth meeting (November 2019) to initiate work on mercury from non-ferrous metals mining and smelting, which it had identified as a cross-cutting topic amongst several Partnership areas.
Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is crucial to the livelihood of millions of people in over 80 countries, mainly in rural areas with limited alternative economic prospects. ASGM is increasingly recognized as an opportunity to alleviate poverty and contribute to local, national, and regional development.
The first segment of the fourth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention on Mercury (COP-4) is taking place from 1 to 5 November 2021 online.
Masami Ogata is a survivor of Minamata Disease, a debilitating illness caused by industrial mercury poisoning, which originated in the Japanese town of the same name in the 1950s. As a UN conference on preventing future poisoning outbreaks gets underway, we hear Mr. Ogata’s story.
As a storyteller at the Minamata Disease Municipal Museum, Mr. Ogata helps to keep alive the memory of what is considered to be one of the most serious Japanese pollution incidents of the Twentieth Century.
In the late 1950s, people and animals in the Japanese fishing village of Minamata began to fall ill to a strange disease, which mainly affects the central nervous system. In severe cases, victims fell into a coma and died within weeks. Researchers later found that high levels of methylmercury, the most toxic form of mercury, in the industrial wastewater from a chemical factory was the cause of the disease and named it Minamata disease.
The overall goal of the UNEP Global Mercury Partnership is to protect human health and the environment from the releases of mercury.