Asia Pacific Regional Preparatory Meeting for the 5th Meeting of the COP to the Minamata Convention on Mercury
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.
