Asia Monitor

UNU e-Newsletter

Issue 14. August 2005

In this issue

International News: Stockholm Convention COP1
The first meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP1) of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) was held in Uruguay, from 2 to 6 May 2005. One of the many legal frameworks approved by the COP1 is of a POPs review committee that will evaluate proposals by the Parties to add more chemicals to the POPs list. As of 1 August, 2005, five chemicals are proposed as follows.
1. Pentabromodiphenyl ether, a flame retardant, by Norway
2. Chlordecone, agricultural insecticide, by European Union
3. Hexabromobiphenyl, a flame retardant, by European Union
4. Lindane, pesticide, by Mexico
5. Perfluorooctane sulfonate, an inflammable surfactant known as PFOS, by Sweden
These proposals will be reviewed at the first committee meeting scheduled for 7-11 November in Geneva. Mr. Reiner Arndt (Germany) would serve as Chair, and Fiji, Philippines, Qatar, Yemen (two years); China, Japan, Jordan, and Thailand (four years) from the Asian & the Pacific region would nominate experts to serve the review committee.
Stockholm Convention Website
First meeting of the Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee (POPRC)

Asian News: Is your lab registered with the Global Inventory of POP Laboratories?

UNEP Chemicals is still accepting responses to registration questionnaires from laboratories interested in participating in its global POPs monitoring activities. The global monitoring is needed in order for the international community to evaluate the effectiveness of the Stockholm Convention. According to Article 16 of the Convention, the first evaluation is scheduled for 2008, four years after the Convention’s entry into force. Of the approximately 200 world-wide laboratories currently registered with UNEP Chemicals, 38 are located in the Asian & the Pacific region. A list of the currently registered institutions can be found on the UNEP Chemicals website (http://www.chem.unep.ch/gmn/gmnlabs/default.htm).

In this Asian News, the registered laboratories instrument portfolios are reported. There are three categories of gas chromatograph (GC) instruments appropriate for POPs analysis:

1) GC/Electron Capture Detection (ECD) or GC/ECD;

2) GC/Low Resolution Mass Spectrometry (LRMS) or GC/LRMS and;

3) GC/High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (HRMS) or GC/HRMS.
To read more, click here.

Articles from Ministries in the Asian region
Ms. HARUKI AGUSTINA, M. Env. Eng. Sc., Ministry of the Environment, Indonesia
She is currently the Head of Sub Division for Forestry Product Industry, Assistant Deputy for Hazardous Substance and Hazardous Waste Management at Manufacture and Agro Industries, and Deputy Ministry for Hazardous Substance and Hazardous Waste Management.
To read more, click the above link.


UNU News and Events
Coming events
UNU International Conference--Environmental Monitoring and Governance in the East Asian Hydrosphere (Tokyo, Japan, on 21 September 2005)
Commemorating the completion of the third phase of the Coastal Hydrosphere project (2002-2005 “Environmental Monitoring and Governance in the East Asian Hydrosphere”), a conference will be held in Tokyo on September 21, 2005. The first part of this one day event, which will start from 9:00 AM, will review legal guidelines created by the Stockholm Convention for use by the international community in reducing and eliminating 12 POPs, which include Dioxins and DDTs. The conference will also highlight a POPs review committee set forth at the first Conference of Parties (COP1) held this May. The other part of the conference will not only report UNU's project outcomes on capacity development for POPs monitoring in the East Asia, but also present the latest challenges in global chemical management such as Mercury intake from several fish species such as Tuna.
For the conference programme and more details please visit: http://landbase.hq.unu.edu/Conference/2005_Conference/index_f.htm

Sixth UNU/ORI Joint International Workshop (Iwate, Japan in October 2005)
The United Nations University (UNU) and the Ocean Research Institute (ORI) of the University of Tokyo will jointly hold in Otsuchi, Japan (24 – 30 October, 2005) the sixth International Workshop on Marine Environment. The workshop will invite about 10 selected people to exchange academic and research information on the three topics; (1) the Tsunami impact in Indian Ocean including importance of mangroves and ecosystems on coastal areas; (2) sustainable fishery; and (3) shellfish poison. To learn more about previous workshops in this series, please visit the project website called Landbase at: http://landbase.hq.unu.edu/Events.htm

Event reports
UNU-Yamaha Expo Forum “Water for People – Drinking Water and the Coastal Hydrosphere” on 6^th August, 2005
On Saturday, 6 August, United Nations University (UNU) and Yamaha Motor Corporation (Yamaha) hosted a forum, “Water for People — Drinking Water and the Coastal Hydrosphere,” in the UN Pavilion at Aichi World Expo 2005, Japan.

This 3-hour event was hosted through the partnership between UNU and Yamaha with its objective to further strengthen the efforts in striving for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particularly Target 10 of Goal 7 — that is, to “halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation.” The forum emphasized the importance of the water resources management and its use, in order to benefit those who use the water resources for their daily activities particularly in the developing countries.

To read more, click here
Media release on the UNU website

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Edited by Michelle Bene and Fukuya Iino

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This newsletter is a quarterly bulletin made possible with the support of Shimadzu, Japan