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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.
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.
COOGAVEPE technology center in Peixoto de Azevedo, Brazil, October 2023.
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
As the sun rises across Mexico’s Sierra Gorda nature reserve, a golden light illuminates its nearly 400,000 hectares of mountains, gorges and valleys.
Set amid this vast wilderness is the Bucareli mercury mine.
Just after dawn, a metal door to the mine opens. The morning’s silence is broken by the dull sound of a generator and workers traipsing to their posts.
Among them is Jose Vigil, one of 800 people in the region who mine mercury, a highly toxic substance.
But for Vigil and the other miners, the clock is ticking.
21-26 May 2023, Kara – Togo
Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is recognised in Africa, and particularly in West Africa, as one of the income-generating activities for local communities. However, despite the positive economic benefits, particularly in terms of improving living conditions, ASGM requires special attention, particularly in terms of organisation, regulations and sustainable practices that respect human health and the environment.
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.
21-26 mai 2023, Kara – Togo
L’extraction artisanale et à petite échelle de l’or est reconnue en Afrique, et particulièrement en Afrique de l’Ouest, comme l’une des activités génératrices de revenus pour les communautés autochtones. Cependant, malgré les retombées économiques positives notamment pour l’amélioration des conditions de vie des populations, la pratique de l’orpaillage nécessite une attention particulière notamment en termes d’organisation, réglementations, et pratiques durables respectueuses de la santé humaine et de l’environnement.
As we reached the 6th anniversary of the Minamata Convention on Mercury entering into force, many countries are moving from planning to implementation of the required actions to make mercury history.
Every week, Ibu Sugiyanti makes her way to the small-scale gold mining camp where she teaches mercury-free alternatives to other women miners. The site is located on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, in the village of Logas, an impressive biodiversity hotspot that is also home to hundreds of small-scale gold miners. Sugiyanti’s efforts aim to empower women and transform the way mining is approached in this vibrant corner of Sumatra.
For centuries, human beings have endangered body and mind in pursuit of the toxic fallacy that pale skin represents the highest form of beauty.
Artisanal mining is a common activity in various regions of Brazil, but despite its economic benefits it also faces significant challenges that expose workers to multiple risks, including the use of mercury in mineral extraction. These challenges are especially pronounced for Brazilian women, who often face gender discrimination, poor working conditions, and health risks.
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
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.
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.
In August 2017, one of the world’s most recent environmental accords came into force: The Minamata Convention on Mercury.
Across Myanmar, artisanal miners hunt for gold flecks in rivers and pit mines. The work is physically taxing and the income meagre. For many, the sprinkling of particles they find will only offer a few extra dollars of daily income.
The Minamata Convention on Mercury is an international treaty designed to protect human health and the environment from anthropogenic emissions and releases of mercury and mercury compounds. The year 2020 is a milestone for the Convention – it is when parties are required to cease the manufacture, import and export of many mercury-containing products listed in the Convention. Monika Stankiewicz, Executive Secretary of the Convention, reflects on its impact.
Mercury—a toxic heavy metal that can cause serious and lasting health problems—turns up in many places that you wouldn’t expect. It has now been more than two years since the entry into force of the Minamata Convention, a global treaty to protect human health and the environment from the adverse effects of mercury. But the production of many mercury-containing products continues around the globe.
In July, a 47-year-old woman showed up at the emergency department of her local hospital in Sacramento, California. Her speech was slurred, she couldn’t walk, and she was unable to feel her hands or face. The woman soon fell into a coma, where she remained for several weeks.
The cause of the woman’s desperate condition, health officials soon discovered, was a skin-lightening ingredient—mercury—that had been illegally mixed into her pot of face cream.
Deep inside the layers of ice sitting atop the Andes Mountains in Peru is evidence of the earliest human-caused air pollution. Within the core of the 1,200-year-old Quelccaya Ice Cap, scientists have found traces of lead and mercury, the chemicals used after the Spanish occupation, in the silver mines of Potosi, Bolivia.
“People are not living here, they are only surviving,” says Father Maurizio Binaghi as he surveys the sprawling, smoking Dandora landfill site from an elevated position on the grounds of the school he runs in Korogocho slum in Nairobi, Kenya. Dandora is one of Africa’s largest unregulated landfill sites.
“The people who live near the dump have a saying,” says Father Binaghi: “‘I don’t know when I will die, but I do know what I will die from.’”
The overall goal of the UNEP Global Mercury Partnership is to protect human health and the environment from the releases of mercury.