Over 750 participants attended the session, representing 137 governments, as well as 57 non-governmental and 14 intergovernmental organizations. Following a round of regional group meetings on Saturday, 12 January, delegates negotiated on the basis of a text prepared by INC Chair Fernando Lugris (Uruguay) during the intersessional period. Marked by a shared sense of purpose and spirit of cooperation, INC5 addressed several complex policy and technical issues, including mercury air emissions and releases to water and land, health aspects, and phase-out and phase-down dates for products and processes. A final compromise was reached late Friday night, based on a package addressing outstanding issues related to the preamble, finance and compliance. The Minamata Convention’s major highlights include: the ban on new mercury mines, the phase-out of existing ones, control measures on air emissions, and the international regulation of the informal sector of artisanal and small-scale gold mining.
The Minamata Convention on Mercury will be forwarded to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Governing Council, which will meet from 18-22 February 2013, in Nairobi, Kenya, and will be adopted and opened for signature during a diplomatic conference to be held from 7-11 October 2013, in Kumamoto/Minamata, Japan.
Full article and final text is available at http://www.iisd.ca/vol28/enb2822e.html
