In Bangkok, Thailand, the Science Policy Panel OEWG Asia Pacific Regional Meeting is now taking place both in person and online. The gathering will take place immediately after the Minamata Asia-Pacific regional gathering, which will take place there on September 5 and 6, 2023.
Siddika Sultana, Executive Director of ESDO, is currently representing ESDO at this meeting.
In her statement, she supported the decision to set a mercury threshold, which should be as low as possible with a maximum of 10 ppm, as opposed to a 25 mg/kg threshold that would allow vast quantities of mercury-contaminated waste to be emitted. She agreed with the experts, supporting a threshold between 1 and 10 mg/kg total mercury content. Korea, Switzerland, Canada, and Uganda has used a threshold of around 1-2 ppm for a long period of time. Indonesia has already set the threshold to be 0.3–10 ppm for different wastes and a dumping limit of 0.05 ppm. ESDO firmly believes that a review process should be kept open to consider the revision of these thresholds at COP7.
