UPDATE - Canada leads world in ratifying toxic chemicals pact
Date: 24-May-01
Country: SWEDEN
Author: Alister Doyle
Canada's Environment Minister David Anderson, among 127 other ministers or senior officials at a ceremony in Stockholm, signed the treaty and then ratified it about two hours later after nations from Albania to Zimbabwe had also signed.
The Stockholm convention on banning or minimising use of so-called persistent organic pollutants (POPs), blamed for causing cancers and birth defects among people and animals, will enter into force once 50 nations have ratified.
Ratification usually has to be done by national parliaments, a process that can take years, especially for environmental treaties. Anderson and U.N. officials told Reuters they were unaware of any nation ever ratifying a treaty so quickly.
"There is a clear opportunity for international action as opposed to international talk," Anderson said. Many POPs are pesticides such as DDT which have been long banned in most rich nations and industrial wastes.
Inuit peoples in the Arctic north of Canada have been especially hard hit by the POPs, which can also weaken immune defences and cause learning problems.
"It's a good day for the Arctic and the world," said Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, Canada.
She said that through traditional food in the Arctic: "these POPs became part of us...we are on the frontlines of the war against POPs."
Low temperatures meant that POPs lingered longer in the environment, she added.
Swept around the world by ocean and air currents, POPs can build up in fat. Animals with thick fatty layers, such as seals, whales or walruses, pass on their high levels of POPs to people.
"In some areas about 45-65 percent of women have levels of PCBs in their blood up to five times" recommended levels, Anderson said. PCBs are used in transformers, capacitators and in paints.
Environmental group Greenpeace said Canada's ratification seemed a record. But Kevin Stairs of Greenpeace International said the speed was a paradox, accusing Canada of trying to water down some of the stricter provisions for industries.
Anderson and other ministers urged states to ratify the pact before September 2002 world environmental talks in Johannesburg.
Kjell Larsson, the Swedish Environment Minister whose country holds the European Union rotating presidency, said "the EU will try to follow Canada" in ratifying quickly and that all EU nations should try to ratify by September 2002.
