{"id":1499,"date":"2013-01-22T14:52:35","date_gmt":"2013-01-22T19:52:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.inuitcircumpolar.com\/?p=1499"},"modified":"2026-02-09T14:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T19:57:10","slug":"global-mercury-treaty-adopted-mentions-vulnerability-of-arctic-ecosystems-and-indigenous-communities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.inuitcircumpolar.com\/staging\/press-releases\/global-mercury-treaty-adopted-mentions-vulnerability-of-arctic-ecosystems-and-indigenous-communities\/","title":{"rendered":"Global mercury treaty adopted, mentions vulnerability of Arctic ecosystems and indigenous communities"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\r\n\r\n22 January, 2013 \u2013 Geneva, Switzerland\/Ottawa, Canada\r\n\r\nAfter a week with long negotiations that lasted throughout several nights, ICC participants were pleased to see the adoption of a global mercury treaty (the \u2018Minamata Convention on Mercury\u2019) at the 5th Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee (INC) of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on Saturday, January 19th 2013, at 7 am in Geneva, Switzerland. This treaty consists of a mixture of legally binding and voluntary measures and will attempt to regulate mercury sources (including mercury emissions to air and releases to water and land, artisanal small-scale gold mining, mercury-containing products and processes involving mercury use), trade with mercury, storage, health aspects, and various other issues.\r\n\r\nThe Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) was represented both as an independent observer and as part of the Canadian delegation, to ensure that Inuit concerns on mercury contamination are being raised.\r\n\r\nParnuna Egede from ICC Greenland asks countries to reduce mercury emissions in her intervention to the plenary of the 5th Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee. Picture: Eva Kruemmel\r\n\r\nICC also worked with other indigenous groups present at the meeting which together built the \u201cGlobal Indigenous Peoples Caucus\u201d, and fought for the inclusion and recognition of Indigenous peoples in the treaty text. Indigenous peoples are particularly vulnerable to health effects from mercury because their traditional diets often consist of fish and\/or top marine predators that can contain high levels of mercury.\r\n\r\nInuit Circumpolar Council \u2013 Canada Office\r\n\r\n75 Albert Street, Suite 1001, Ottawa, ON K1P 5E7\r\nP: 613.563.2642 F: 613.565.3089icc@inuitcircumpolar.com \/ www.inuitcircumpolar.com\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\"page1image3310452976\"\"page1image3310453248\"\"page1image3310453504\"\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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\r\n\r\nCanada, Nepal and the European Union (EU) submitted text for inclusion in the preambular text of the treaty that highlighted indigenous concerns and the Canadian and EU proposal further referenced the vulnerability of the Arctic. However, while Canada\u2019s text outlined the vulnerability of \u201cindigenous peoples\u201d (a term in accordance with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was adopted in 2007), the EU was not able to support the language. Particularly EU delegations from France and the United Kingdom (UK) pointed to their domestic laws which would prevent them to sign on to a legally-binding treaty that included text recognizing \u201cindigenous peoples\u201d, and only supported language highlighting \u201cindigenous communities\u201d. This is despite the fact that both France and UK have endorsed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.\r\n\r\nWhen the preamble was passed during the negotiations, Bolivia noted for the record that the concept and terminology of \u201cpeoples\u201d was internationally accepted, and that it would be rather worrying if the use of \u201ccommunities\u201d instead of \u201cpeoples\u201d would set a precedent in future international agreements.\r\n\r\n\u201cAfter fighting more than twenty years for the international recognition of our human rights, this is certainly a major set-back.\u201d, said Duane Smith, ICC Canada\u2019s President. \u201cBut we are encouraged by the acknowledgment of \u2018indigenous peoples\u2019 during the negotiations from Canada, the United States and many other countries, including several countries from the EU. Hopefully France and UK will take this as an inducement to take measures that will enable them to recognize Indigenous peoples in future legally-binding global treaties.\u201d\r\n\r\nOverall, the mercury treaty is expected to result in the reduction of mercury levels in the environment globally, however many years will pass before the first measures have to be implemented. \u201cThe treaty will only require reductions in atmospheric mercury emissions 5 to 10 years after the mercury treaty comes into force \u2013 possibly only by 2020 for new coal-fired power plants, or by 2025 for existing power plants, as one example.\u201d, explains Parnuna Egede from ICC Greenland. \u201cThis means that several hundreds of plants can be built without the inclusion of mercury-reducing technologies for many years to come. It will probably be decades before we can measure declines of mercury levels in the environment based on actions resulting from the mercury treaty.\u201d\r\n\r\nNevertheless, the fact that over 140 countries were able to agree on measures to reduce mercury in the environment has to be viewed as a success. \u201cIt is our hope that countries will take domestic measures to reduce mercury emissions long before the mercury treaty comes into force.\u201d Duane Smith said. \u201cSeveral Inuit regions currently have consumption advisories in effect due to high mercury levels in some traditional food items, and the mercury in our foods is largely due to global mercury emissions, for example from coal-fired power plants in Asia. Consumption advisories are not an acceptable way for us to avoid health effects from mercury. Our environment needs to be healthy in order for us to be healthy. \u201d\r\n\r\nThe Minamata Convention on Mercury will be open for signature at a Ministerial meeting in Japan in October this year.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n
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\r\n\r\nFor more information:\r\nYvonne Moorhouse, ICC Canada YMoorhouse@inuitcircumpolar.com Ph: +613. 563. 2642\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n
\r\n\r\nEva Kruemmel, ICC Canada EKruemmel@inuitcircumpolar.com Ph: +613. 563. 2642\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-29","category-press-releases"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inuitcircumpolar.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inuitcircumpolar.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inuitcircumpolar.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inuitcircumpolar.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inuitcircumpolar.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.inuitcircumpolar.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":987515337,"href":"https:\/\/www.inuitcircumpolar.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions\/987515337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.inuitcircumpolar.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inuitcircumpolar.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.inuitcircumpolar.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}