IPEN Regional Hub Eco-Accord, in cooperation with the Independent Ecological Expertise, an IPEN Participating Organization in Kyrgyzstan, successfully organized and hosted the EECCA regional workshop in Kyrgyzstan from August 26-29. The meeting was held in one of the most beautiful places, Lake Issyk-Kul, located in the Tian Shan Mountains. It is the second largest saline lake in the world, warm enough to swim in.
The team of 24 NGO representatives from countries in the EECCA region worked hard to strengthen and adopt a revised Regional NGO Strategy for the current period until 2030, with its intermediate assessment in 2020.
The programme of the meeting was quite comprehensive, but the team allocated enough time for a fruitful discussion, communicating many different perspectives and expertise on a range of topics.
On September 28th and 29th, IPEN Participating Organizations from the Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia (EECCA) region met in Erevan, Armenia. At the meeting, IPEN POs in EECCA discussed IPEN's current and future projects, campaigns and initiatives, as well as the role IPEN EECCA POs will play in these activities. IPEN new initiatives, including Women and Chemicals, Gender Strategy, Women’s Caucus, Ocean Pollution, and Chemicals in Products were on the agenda of the meeting and aroused great interest. Three presentations on gender and endocrine disrupting chemicals, POPs in breast milk and monitoring of heavy metals in food linked the work of NGOs with that of the EECCA scientific community.
In the nearest future, we expect a major and important event for all of us - the First Conference of the Parties of the Minamata Convention on Mercury. We invested a lot of effort into the development and promotion of the Convention. We congratulate all people who facilitated the event by their work, knowledge and devotion!
The Minamata Convention on Mercury prioritises environmental considerations over interests of global businesses used to pursue their financial gains in a resource-based economy that ignores environmental effects. It is not only associated with banning primary mercury extraction from global deposits, it also deals with tightening control over different industrial operations, particularly with extraction and processing non-ferrous metals ores, that are accompanied by uncontrolled releases of many tons of mercury into the environment.
IPEN Participating Organization MAMA-86 organized a press briefing with Ukraine’s Ministry of Health today in Kiev entitled: “Health without compromises – Ukraine’s Ministry of Health prohibits the use of asbestos and products containing it” to announce that Ukraine had formally banned asbestos. The event was addressed by Oksana Syvak, Deputy Minister for Public Health and European Integration, Olga Tsyguleva, Coordinator of the Program on Chemical Safety for MAMA-86, and Oleksil Shumilo, Head of Kharkiv City NGO “EcoPravo-Kharkiv.”
Two IPEN Participating Organizations - Arnika (Czech Republic) and EcoMuseum (Kazakhstan), together with local NGO Eco Mangystau - released a new report about POPs and heavy metals in camel milk samples from the Mangystau Region, which is found by the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan. High levels of PCBs and zinc, and relatively increased levels of PAU, were found by analyses done in Czech laboratories.
Today, top-tens of the biggest polluters of Kazakhstan based on the official data were published. The charts reveal that the environment has been greatly contaminated by steelworks Kazakhmys and ArcelorMittal, oil companies KazMunaiGas and KazTransOil and power plant in Ekibastuz. Interactive map of facilities that exceed the safe threshold limits valid in the EU (1) is now available in clearly understandable form on-line at www.ecocitizens.kz.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) office in Yerevan, Armenia presented a "Best Women Entrepreneur for 2016" prize to IPEN Participating Orgnization Armenian Women for Health and Healthy Environment (AWHHE) for their project to improve entrepreneurial skills and income generating capacities of female farmers through the use of solar fruit- and herb-drying equipment and technologies. The awards were presented to local partners that have promoted good and innovative practices through project activities.