Photo credit: UNDP Peru
Countries across the world are working hard with funding support from the Global Environment Facility to eliminate mercury, dioxin, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other toxic substances from within their borders and across food, water, and healthcare systems.
As the financial mechanism of both the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) and the Minamata Convention on Mercury, the GEF’s funding support to countries is helping them meet international commitments and build a cleaner and safer future.
Take mercury. Since 2014, the GEF has funded 166 projects in 127 countries geared toward making Minamata Convention pledges a reality. Two of these are currently underway in South America’s second and third largest nations: Argentina and Peru.
In Argentina, a six-year initiative implemented by the UN Development Programme is powering a government push to ensure that mercury, POPs, and other hazardous chemicals are managed safely throughout their lifecycles – from creation through to disposal – and that the country meets its Minamata and Stockholm obligations.
Peru, meanwhile, is drawing upon GEF funding to set up a national coordination system for the handling of dangerous substances. The project ‘Environmentally sound management of PCBs, Mercury and other toxic chemicals in Peru’ will also help the country free its healthcare system from mercury and reduce pesticide contamination on farms and in urban wholesale markets.
By its conclusion in 2026, the project ‘Environmentally Sound Management of POPs, Mercury and other Hazardous Chemicals in Argentina’ will have facilitated the safe disposal of 5,000 metric tons of PCBs, 370 metric tons of mercury and mercury-tainted waste, and 100 metric tons of obsolete POPs and hazardous pesticides.
PCBs, man-made compounds that are stable at high temperatures, were once deemed essential to industrial development.
Widely used from the late 1920s to the 1980s for everything from the insulation of transformers to the creation of fire-resistant paints, they have since been revealed as both carcinogenic and poisonous to people and landscapes.
As one of 185 countries to have ratified the Stockholm Convention – the global agreement to halt usage of chemical pollutants dangerous to living things – Argentina is required to stop all PCB use by 2025 and to have safely disposed of all PCB-contaminated waste by 2028.
While the country has already made headway, aided by a previous GEF-funded initiative, more remains to be done. Estimates suggest some 15,000 metric tons of PCB oils and PCBs-containing equipment remain, along with substantial stockpiles of dangerous pesticides.
Mercury is another issue. Although the import, export, and manufacture of mercury-added products has been banned since 2020 under the Minamata Convention, many countries still harbor large stocks of thermometers, lights, batteries, and other products that contain the poisonous silver mineral, along with contaminated waste from mining, healthcare, and other industries.
The convention stipulates that all of this must be disposed of in an environmentally sound way, since even small amounts pose a threat to health.
The GEF project is working on multiple fronts to help Argentina tackle these issues. It is supporting government efforts to reinforce laws and regulations governing hazardous chemicals management, to establish coordination mechanisms with the private sector, and to draft a national action plan on mercury reduction.
To improve the tracking of all toxins, Argentina is updating inventories, setting up a national Pollutant Release and Transfer Register, and drafting a national strategy on the handling of dangerous chemicals.
Pilot projects will see the safe elimination of 100 metric tons of highly hazardous pesticides and contaminated pesticide packaging, along with the disposal of 20 metric tons of mercury-containing waste, and 350 metric tons of mercury from Argentina’s gold mining sector.
Similar work is underway some 3,400 kilometers to the northwest.
Peru, South America’s third-largest country by area and one of the most biodiverse in the world, already has a strong body of laws governing the import, use, and disposal of hazardous substances. However, it lacks a unified coordination and decision-making mechanism.
A GEF-funded initiative, also managed by UNDP, will see the creation of just such a platform: one that brings together all authorities involved in tracing and handling toxic substances. This will offer a unified point for data-gathering and reporting to the secretariats of the Stockholm and Minamata Conventions as well as the OECD.
Separate pilots will explore ways to encourage safer handling of dangerous materials on farms, in urban markets, and within the healthcare system.
The first of these will use innovative education and incentive programs to encourage family farmers in nine regions to handle pesticides and their discarded containers in a sound way. Successful approaches will be deployed throughout the country.
A second is introducing growers of commercial crops such as bananas and pineapples to safer methods for rinsing, compacting, recycling, and disposing of chemical-contaminated agricultural plastics and empty pesticide containers and finding ways to encourage adoption.
The problem of chemical contamination is not confined to rural areas, however.
To address concerns about highly toxic pesticides in Peru’s urban food supply, the project is venturing to Lima, and to the central market frequented by its greengrocers. Its object is to identify any contaminants on the fruit and vegetables sold and trace them to their source.
By its close, the project aims to dispose of metric 600 tons of PCB-containing equipment and materials, along with metric 100 tons of pesticides containing POPs and other poisonous chemicals.
The Peru project is also supporting efforts to stamp out mercury use in the healthcare system.
A pilot will work with a handful of healthcare facilities – four large hospitals and six smaller centers – to replace and safely dispose of mercury-containing equipment, from thermometers and sphygmomanometers to batteries and thermostats.
Information gathered through this limited trial will form the basis of a replacement strategy for healthcare facilities across the country.
Five additional pilots will seek to revamp the healthcare system’s approach to all medical waste. By incorporating best environmental practices into the collection, transport, and final disposal of waste, the project aims to sharply reduce the unintentional emission of POPs and other toxic chemicals.
Both the Argentina and Peru projects include a critical final component: the tracking and dissemination of lessons learned nationwide through central knowledge-management systems. Results will also be monitored over the longer term to ensure lasting benefits.
These twin initiatives are well on their way to helping both countries achieve their convention objectives and ensure a healthier future for all.
