IPEN launched its African Lead Paint Elimination Campaign with an Inception Meeting held in Dar es Salam, Tanzania in late November. The project involves four African countries – Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast and Tanzania – and is being implemented in partnership with the Global Environment Facility and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which provided $1 million in funding.
The newsletter features updates from IPEN Participating Organizations on some of their work in the region, including from AVD-Kowa Murna, Carbone Guinée, Centre Optionnel pour la Promotion et la Régénération Economique et Sociale Secteur Afrique (COPRESSA), Centre de Recherche et d’Education pour le Développement (CREPD), Propreté, Environnement et Santé (PES) and Association pour la Défense de l’Environnement et des Consommateurs (ADEC).
For immediate release (Bangkok): The U.S. has led a push at the mercury treaty negotiations in Bangkok to further delay any global action on mercury contaminated sites. The sixth negotiating meeting of the Minamata Convention on Mercury has failed to live up to its title, which references the world’s most infamous mercury contaminated site in Minamata, Japan.
IPEN´s Dioxin Working Group, together with the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) and Health Care Without Harm (HCWH), has sent an open letter to the European Union to oppose European Commission-funded construction of medical waste incinerators in the Pacific region. The letter is based on the analysis of the Pacific Hazardous Waste Management Project (Pac Waste) by IPENer Pawel Gluszynski in Poland.
IPEN and Ecological Alert and Recovery Thailand (EARTH) held a press conference at the headquarters of the Thai Journalists’ Association to call attention to the mercury pollution issues in Thailand, particularly mercury emissions from coal power plants and other industrial sources such as petroleum and gas production and waste incineration.
The sixth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC6) for the Mercury Treaty is currently underway in Bangkok, Thailand. Numerous IPEN representatives are participating in the meeting, and IPEN Co-Chair Manny Calonzo delivered an opening statement on 3 November.