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Canada and the Proposed Global Convention on POPs
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Sheila Watt-Cloutier, President, ICC Canada, presenting a carving by Lucy Meeko to Klaus Topfer, Director General, United Nations Environment Programme, Nairobi, February 1999 | | | In March 2000, negotiators from more than 100 countries will meet in Bonn, Germany, under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to discuss a global convention to eliminate key persistent organic pollutants (POPs). This will be the fourth meeting of negotiators. Previous sessions have been held in Montreal, Nairobi, and Geneva. The convention may be ready late in 2000, but signing is more likely the following year. This issue of Silarjualiriniq includes an important and well-received speech by Sheila Watt-Cloutier, ICC Canada President, to the negotiators at their first meeting in summer 1998. Designed to stop the generation, use, and release into the environment of selected POPs, this convention should be of great interest to northerners, particularly Inuit and other indigenous peoples. In co-operation with Dene, Metis, and Yukon first nations, ICC Canada is working internationally to promote a convention that is comprehensive, rigorously implemented, and verifiable.
Scientists have known since the late 1980s that many POPs are toxic, volatile, and persistent and that some are transported to the North through the atmosphere and deposited in the Arctic "sink." These many and varied pollutants, often with long and difficult-to-pronounce names, include pesticides (dieldrin, DDT, toxaphene, chlordane, and hexachlorocyclohexane); several industrial compounds (PCBs and HCBs); and some industrial and combustion by-products (PAHs, PCDDs, and PCDFs).
Once in the Arctic, many POPs bioaccumulate and biomagnify in the food chain. They have a high lipid solubility, concentrating in the fatty tissue of animalsparticularly those in the marine environment. Inuit and other northern indigenous people ingest varying amounts of POPs when they eat country food. Many Inuit, in particular, have levels of POPs in their bodies well in excess of the "level of concern" defined by Health Canada. In autumn 1997, studies of Inuit women in the Keewatin and Baffin regions of the Northwest Territories showed that 59 and 65 per cent respectively of those studied had quantities of PCBs in their blood as much as five times beyond this level of concern.
Why should we be concerned about POPs? Many of them are endocrine disruptors that cause reproductive, neurological, and immune system dysfunctions and most have inter- generational effects, because they pass the placental barrier. Research completed in the United States points to "learning deficits" and subtle behavioural effects in children born to mothers with high levels of POPs in their bodies. Women in the American studies had consumed, over a long period, significant quantities of Lake Michigan fish contaminated with POPs. It is particularly disturbing that the levels of POPs in these mothers and their children are generally below levels recorded in many Inuit in northern Canada and Greenland.
Although further research is needed to quantify the health risks of consuming country food, available evidence suggests that POPs in the Arctic have an impact on public health. This is why the forthcoming POPs convention is of such importance to Inuit and why ICC Canada is working so assiduously to promote an effective agreement. Nevertheless, decision makers in Canada need to be cautious in the dietary advice they give to northerners; it makes no sense to dissuade people from eating highly nutritious country food when alternative store-bought goods are often prohibitively expensive and some are linked to increasing rates of diabetes and other ailments. Government agencies continue to advise northern women to breast-feed their infants.
While it is clear that the only solution to the POPs problem is to reduce emissions at source, this is a very difficult goal to achieve. Countries in the developing and developed worlds sometimes have different priorities. Some POPs, such as DDT, are used in tropical countries to control malaria and every year save thousands of lives. Cost effective alternatives must be available if a ban on DDT is to be implemented in tropical and equatorial countries through the global POPs convention. Many developing countries have neither the money nor the institutional capacity to implement POPs elimination obligations to be outlined in the convention. Others will require many years and much help to eliminate these pollutants. Stockpiles have to be destroyed, but in a way that does not make the problem worse. Incinerators that send pollutants up a smokestack will not help northerners.
International environmental conventions are usually rather general, with commitments long on rhetoric but short on substance. Even as they acknowledge the need for co-operative, international decision making, nations guard their sovereignty and ability to make decisions unilaterally. As a net recipient of POPs, Canada has much to gain from a strong and carefully implemented POPs convention. Indeed, data collected in the Arctic, mostly by Canadian scientists through the Northern Contaminants Programme, figured prominently in the decision by UNEP's governing council to sponsor the global POPs negotiations. But a bad convention may be worse than no convention at all, for it may mistakenly convince decision makers that the problem has been addressed and that they can move on to other issues.
As an official observer in the negotiations, ICC Canada has come to believe that a "deal" must be struck between the developed and developing worlds if the global POPs convention is to help Inuit and other northerners. The developing world must accept detailed and legally binding obligations to phase out as quickly as possible key POPs that threaten public health. The developed world must, in turn, acknowledge that money, institutional and intellectual assistance, and technology must be provided to enable the developing world to achieve the convention's goals. And, to generate and maintain confidence that the convention is being implemented by all who sign and ratify it, all should endorse the need for effective compliance monitoring and reporting to the international community.
The recent Speech from the Throne gave prominence to environmental and health issues, including POPs, and the federal government has promised to sponsor and conduct more research. But now is the time for effective and concerted action on the international stage by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, which, with the Department of the Environment, leads the Canadian delegation to the global POPs negotiations. The POPs convention is a test of the "human and environmental security" and "soft power" agendas that lie at the heart of Canada's foreign policy developed under the Hon. Lloyd Axworthy, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
Comments by Sheila Watt-Cloutier:
Vice-President for Canada of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference to the International Negotiating Committee Regarding the Need for a Global Treaty On Persistent Organic Pollutants
29 June 1998
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Good morning. My name is Sheila Watt-Cloutier. I am Vice-President for Canada of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, the organization that defends the rights and interests of Inuit internationally. ICC represents Inuit who live in Alaska, Canada, Greenland and the Chukotka region of Russia. I am delighted to be here today and thank the many people who have made this forum possible, particularly those from Physicians for Social Responsibility.
I was born in Kuujjuaq, a small Inuit village in northern Quebec. Although most Inuit now live in settled communities and enjoy many of the advantages of modern technology, we remain a people tied to the land and to the sea for Inuit are a coastal people.
We are all here today because international negotiations commence in Montreal tomorrow toward an international treaty to reduce emissions of key persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Many of you likely see this as an environmental issue. To Inuit, however, this is a matter of public health.
For those of you who are not familiar with Inuit issues, we are as a people facing many challenges on many fronts and contaminants are one of the larger issues. To sustain ourselves during the last century of rapid change, we have treasured more than ever our land and the food which comes from our land. The process of hunting and fishing, followed by the sharing of food, the communal partaking of one animal, is the time honored ritual which links us to our ancestors and each other.
The power of this connection holds us together as a people, gives us the spiritual strength and physical energy to survive the challenges we face, and cannot for one second be underestimated.
So imagine for a moment if you will the emotions we now feel, shock, panic, rage, grief, despair as we discover that the food which for generations has nourished us and keeps us whole physically and spiritually, is now poisoning us. You go to the supermarket for food. We go out on the land to hunt, fish, trap and gather. The environment is our supermarket.
Over the last five to ten years, considerable research has been conducted in Canada, Greenland, and other northern countries that shows many POPs end-up in the Arctic "sink" our part of the world. Our living land itself, whose healing energy is so strong, it can be palpably felt by anyone, is being made to quietly absorb layer upon layer of contaminants. Summaries of some of this work is available at the back of the room.
Once in the Arctic many POPs enter the food web bioaccumulating and concentrating in whales, seals, polar bears, fish and other animals that are staples of our diet. Depending upon the amount and type of country food consumed, many Inuit have levels of certain POPs in their bodies well in excess of "levels of concern" defined by the Canadian Department of Health. The Canadian Arctic Contaminants Assessment Report and the State of the Arctic Environment Report prepared by all eight Arctic nations and published last year, show that levels of some POPs in some Inuit is 10 to 20 higher than in most temperate regions!
Many of these contaminants are passed from one generation to the next through the placenta and breast milk. As we put our babies to our breasts, we feed them a noxious chemical cocktail that foreshadows neurological disorders, cancer, kidney failure, reproductive dysfunction etc. This is truly worrying. The bond between mother and child lies at the core of our culture. I expect this is the same for all peoples around the world. That Inuit mothers far from areas where POPs are manufactured and used have to think twice before breast feeding their infants is surely a wake-up call to the world. Certainly we take this invisible and insidious threat very seriously.
Olivier Receveur and his colleagues at the world class Centre for Indigenous Peoples Nutrition and the Environment at McGill University have conducted much research into this problem. Additional research is now underway by CINE, government agencies and academics to quantify the health "risks" we face by eating country food. Research already completed on children and women who regularly eat large amounts of POPs contaminated fish from Lake Michigan suggested observable and measurable behavioral effects and "learning deficits" passed from one generation to the next. Significantly, the level of POPs found in many Inuit is far higher than that found in either the women or children in the American study.
While our land is immense, we Inuit are few in numbers and don't constitute a major lobby group. Until recent years, we have not been influential in world affairs as we were still reeling from tumultuous change. But we are back now and wish to speak out on behalf of the land that has sustained us for hundreds of generations. We are the land and the land is us. We cannot stand by, waiting for slow moving governments to step in and make everything right, rather we must try to effect what change we can.
The few comments explain why I am here speaking with you today, and why ICC will use its observer status in the UN and through our participation in the Canadian Northern Aboriginal Peoples Coordinating Committee on POPs which includes the Inuit, Dene Nation, Metis Nation NWT and the Council for Yukon First Nations to press for a comprehensive, rigorous and verifiable global treaty on POPs. This is our goal. We have been active already in Geneva pressing for the POPs protocol to the UN/ECE Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution. We have had some success, for example, the preambular language to this protocol pointedly mentions the Arctic and indigenous peoples. As well, we fought hard to ensure that the pesticide Lindane be included in this regional agreement as a restricted substance.
Negotiations toward a global POPs agreement are going to be arduous and challenging. They will raise fundamental issues about the relationship between the developed and the developing worlds. Real vision will be needed to achieve a strong and lasting agreement. National governments are inherently cautious and slow moving. Many will likely genuflect to industry.
I am convinced that to achieve ICC's goal which I hope many of you share will take co-operative efforts by all the aboriginal, public health, public interest and environmental communities. We must press, cajole, argue, persuade, communicate, and encourage governments and industry to commit to a global agreement that will protect our health and our environment.
To achieve our objective likely requires a global campaign. I hope key groups here today will talk about how to organize and mount such a campaign. Certainly Inuit and ICC are prepared to be part of such an international effort.
The Arctic region, seemingly so pure and pristine, but already laced with deadly and invisible pollutants has in my opinion become the canary. If the canary survives so can we all.
If we can help people to see that a poisoned Inuk child, a poisoned Arctic and a poisoned planet are one in the same, then we will have effected a shift in peoples awareness that will result without doubt in positive change.
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