by Hayley Scott

The agenda item 4(f) of mercury waste thresholds began on the second day of the COP-5; however, this item has been under consideration since the first COP seven years ago with no conclusion. The item of mercury waste threshold wishes to establish an international value for unacceptable levels of mercury or mercury compounds within waste. Before this COP, a technical expert group met to create a comprehensive report on thresholds and a draft guidance document on test methods. In this report, the technical group narrowed the threshold options down to three values: 25 mg/kg, 15 mg/kg, and 10 mg/kg. As predicted, in the plenary session on the second day a number of interventions were made for this item resulting in a contact group beginning that night. Some parties provided their preferred values, while others refused to state one value. However, it was generally agreed upon from parties that a value must be found during this COP and a contact group should be held. 

Later that night, the first meeting of this contact group occurred. While the meeting was not very proactive, I was able to gain better understanding of how contact groups work. They began the group by creating a rough agenda for the paragraphs to be considering during the group’s meeting. A picture of this agenda can be seen below. The most significant decision made during the first contact group was the addition of an ‘opt-out’ clause. Essentially, if a country could not meet the decided threshold value, they would follow the provisions outlined in the next paragraph. 

The initial agenda of the contact group decided on the second day of the convention and first day of the contact group

At the next morning plenary, the contact group representative requested and was granted additional time. Again, the contact group meeting was not very productive. Each party had different perspectives and rationales for their ideal threshold value. There are many factors that contribute to a country’s threshold value like population, industries, and financial resources. Some parties lacked the financial means to reach lower threshold values, while other parties could meet these values but were unwilling to provide financial assistance to other parties or to consider raising the thresholds they had already achieved. 

By day four, the contact group had narrowed the threshold values to 15 mg/kg and 10mg/kg and requested more time. Out of respect for the representatives, the president did not allow two contact groups to meet at the same time, meaning time to make this decision was running out. However, she stressed that the threshold value had to be established at this COP. The threshold group met in the middle of the day and spent hours arguing over the wording of the opt-out clause. At one point during this meeting of the contact group, a party representative came up to me to ask how long this deliberation had been going on and when I told him three days, he just shook his head and laughed. With no decision reached on the opt-out clause, the co-chairs of the group decided they had to choose a threshold value, even if the other matters were not resolved. At the end of the meetings on day four, all parties agreed the threshold value would be 15 mg/kg. 

This decision marked Minamata Convention history as a single threshold value had never been established in the convention’s seven year history. On the final day of the convention the agenda item was approved by all parties.

I decided to attend this contact group because I thought the arguments would be more data based than the rest of the convention. I assumed that because the topic was a revolving around a numerical value, the arguments would be over research from different groups, parties, and regions. However, a majority of the disagreements were over the specific wording in the prologue and opt-clause of the agenda item. In the image below, some of the alternative choices for words can be seen. Specifically, I remember them debating over the definition of hazardous waste, the use of the word ‘party’ vs. ‘parties’, and the use of the words ‘documented’ vs. ‘existing’ vs. ‘targeted’. I was also surprised to find out that a fair amount of the representatives has more of a background in policy than science. 

On the screen, the co-chairs created a document to track the potential changes to the document. On the left side, is the original document with the changes made by parties in red and on the right side is the suggest changes form the cochairs.

By Husna Tunje

11/2/2023

After the morning plenary, from, I had the opportunity to attend a Knowledge Lab at the Minamata Convention from 2:00pm to 2:45pm. This lab was based off of a presentation from Mr. Gabriel Ibarra and Alfonso Rodriguez on Tailings Management. The two speakers were from Pure Earth, a company established in 1999 and is specialized in identification and management of toxic sites in lower and middle-income countries. They have been working in Colombia since 2016 and have made more than 50 environmental interventions and clean-ups there. The company works on tailings because they believe that this is the main contributor to the spread of mercury. Poor management of ASGM tailings contributes to high mercury concentrations in mining sites. In Colombia, Pure Earth works on 86 contaminated sites with tailings that have concentrations of mercury from 50-120ppm. The speakers emphasized though, that the amount of gold recovered from the contaminated sites was high as well. (5-15g/ton)Pure Earth presents an innovation based on a sustainable model for the recovery of mercury from tailings of Artisanal and small-scale gold Mining (ASGM). The company has adapted and improved upon a modular technology based on silver-coated copper plates to recover mercury from tailings and prevent its release to the environment during ASGM practices. During the recovery process, mercury from tailings is retained by the plates, ensuring that Hg is not reintroduced into the environment. The silver plating on the plates forms an amalgam with the elemental mercury present in the tailings, and the mercury can be disposed of or reprocessed as appropriate. The miners can also safely reprocess tailings for residual gold capture.It was interesting to learn that Pure Earth is considering working with the Colombian government to introduce incentives for this process in order to motivate miners to use the copper plates innovation for cleaning up sites. It was also noted that most of the tailings are presented from illegal mining and pure earth seeks to clean-up these tailings rather than encourage mining using mercury as in the case of ASGM. The Knowledge Lab was concluded with questions from the audience and an assertion that the innovation was simple, versatile, and provides a return on investment to miners when they get gold from the reprocessing process.

The afternoon plenary session began at 4:30pm after a series of contact groups discussing matters pertaining to the amendment proposals such as thresholds for mercury-waste. The session however, was slow because parties spent a long time cleaning up text, line-by-line, so that it was agreeable to all parties. It was interesting to see how differently parties negotiate. The idea of ‘ants’ and ‘gorillas’ that I had learned in HNR 360 prior to coming to the Convention became even clearer during COP-5.

By Sam Livingston

ALL BOLDED ITEMS ARE EXAMPLES OF THE PROGRESS MADE

10:30-12:30:

Today Marked a true turning point of the COP-5 Minamata convention. After Three days of deliberating planning and disputes, work that had gone until the late hours of the night before was presented in plenary in front of the secretariat and the COP President. You could tell that the delegates all felt this as well since the morning plenary session had the most delegates since the first day as seen in the first photograph. On the previous day (1/11/23) three content groups on budget, mercury waste thresholds, and Annex A and B (which included topics like the phase out/phase down of mercury in cosmetics and dental amalgams and industrial practices) and also a friends of the president group had met to discuss and hopeful finalize the appropriate conference room papers (CRP). The content group on Annexes A and B were first to conclude their deliberations after meeting for about 6 total hours. In regards to annex A, 2 phase out dates were agreed upon for 2 harmful mercury compounds. And 5 compounds were agreed to be harmful and it was agreed that they would be phased out and dates were given for these as well. Though dental amalgams and harmful cosmetic’s draft proposals needed more time to be considered and hence today another plenary group needed to meet. This item was primarily only given only an hour for decisions but after multiple objections the time given was two hours. The content group on mercury waste thresholds spoke next, there seemed to be less consensus in this group 2 nations have stated they would actually need more time to evaluate the scientific data before choosing a threshold while the threshold option of 25 mg/kg was taken off the table by the rest of the parties limiting the threshold to 10 or 15 mg/kg more deliberation was needed. The secretariat granted this group two more hours to discuss but demanded a threshold be met today or “it never will”. The third content group on budget had finalized and submitted the CRP, but still needs time to discuss, staff management, capacity building and effectiveness evaluation. After hearing these summaries I started to worry that no progress was being made and with the COP quickly coming to an end I wondered if some major issues would be brushed aside and no consensus would be held. This would not only be detrimental to this COP but set a precedent of endless deliberation and nitpicking deciding on small issues but forgetting about larger issues at hand.

Thankfully the small friends of the president group had come to a mutual agreement; they had previously discussed how many members each party should be allotted in the effectiveness evaluation for the Minamata convention, going into this meeting there was a very different idea of how many members were needed, the two numbers being 3 and 8. This again felt almost hopeless but through hard work and compromise 5 members were decided upon. The first in many steps forward today. After this the plenary addressed the agenda for today, CRP-7 which addresses artisanal and small scale gold mining was proposed and deliberated on with China having some issues with wording but with cooperation from Canada and Australia this was cleared up and the CRP-7 was passed with relatively no issues. Global supply production trade use of mercury compounds (CRP-2) was discussed briefly and after little discussion mainly by the group of Latin America and the Caribbean (GRULAC) but again the CRP-2 was passed with relatively no problems. This was all that was on the agenda and all were passed. These CRPs still need to be deliberated on later in a plenary session.

3:00-5:00:

The content groups on annex A and B met for a little over two hours. The basis of most deliberation is changing specific text and wording mainly of the phrasing “phase out” and “phase down” as shown in the second photograph. The results of this session were promising with small 3 having clean text and small 2 being close to finished, the CRP on mercury in cosmetics is completely cleaned and agreed upon. Similarly the debate on thresholds focuses mainly on phrasing differences and finally agreeing upon a threshold of 15 mg/kg in the final minute of the meeting.  Today was a great example of how the tone of a convention can shift. We went from debating smaller issues trying to get the draft CRPs exactly right to coming to agreements on some large ticket items such as cosmetics and threshold values. This I believe was in part thanks to strict deadlines set by the president and the secretariat that have constantly work to keep this COP orderly and most importantly timely an underrated necessity to these conventions.

By: Brady Hartnett

We began our third day at the conference in the plenary session, with updates from the previous day’s contact and Friend of the President groups.  In regard to Annexes A and B, the group had spent time evaluating the feasibility of available technology and economic factors and determined more time was needed to standardize final items related to this topic.  There had been some compromise in the Mercury waste threshold discussions from parties, however again more time was requested to continue work.  The last contact group to recap their meeting was the group on programme of work and budget, who followed suite of the previous two groups on calling for more time.  Two Friends of the President groups also reported back, with the one on reporting successfully agreeing on changes to improve clarity and guidance to proposed amendments, while the group on effectiveness evaluations following suite of the contact groups in needing additional time to come to a point of convergence on the number of members per region being established. 

The President then moved on to addressing the agenda for the day.  One of the topic was Item 4(e) – Releases.  After parties (including Norway, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Jordan, Iraq, and Burundi) expressed their support for the Amendment to Article 9, a representative of Say No to Mercury discussed her personal experience of Mercury in dental amalgams.  This portion was one the most moving parts of the convention I have witnessed so far, as she discussed her experience with having Mercury poisoning twice.  She stated that since switching to alternatives to Mercury for her dental work, she has never had a clinical situation where she wishes she could have used Mercury over an alternative.  It was expressed how excuses claiming Mercury is cheaper, easier to use, stronger, and safer are not valid defenses to continue its use. 

During the lunch session, I was able to attend a knowledge lab by Kathleen Smits discussing “Mitigating Mercury Usage and Environmental Contamination: A Multi-Scale, Mixed-Method Approach to Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining” (ASGM).  One of the most shocking statistics from this presentation was that while only 20% of gold is produced from ASGM, approximately 80% of gold miners are involved in ASGM.  To combat the environmental, social, and economical effects of Mercury emissions from ASGM, there needs to be an integration between technical and social solutions.  The first step of this will include re-evaluating the approaches of estimating Mercury usage and emissions for National Actions Plans (NAPs).  With reviewing NAPs from 25 countries, it was determined 60% of them are currently only using one method for their estimation; results also showed that the uncertainties in these estimates can be higher than the target reduction amounts.  It was interesting to see the methods used to create estimates for NAPs and the different ways this can be conducted.  With the limitations of using only quantitative analysis methods, it is important to integrate multiple technological data collection methods and the use of qualitative analysis to develop new approaches for estimating ASGM Mercury emissions.

The majority of the afternoon I spent attending a contact group on Mercury Waste Thresholds.  It was eye-opening to see how small of details matter and how much weight every single word chosen holds.  This was shown in a proposal by Chile that regarded capacity building.  Saudi Arabia and the United States of America were debating over the inclusion of “in a position to do so”; this also showed the importance of clearly stating your intents with these edits, as multiple of the interventions were just over clarity on what was being edited.  In this same session, it was shown how even when a party is moving in a cooperative direction, they may still pause progress due to including conditions about a separate point with their cooperation.  This was shown when addressing the first two paragraphs of the article, where when debating on a threshold for the waste, the deletion of an alternative approach in paragraph 2 was brought into question.  This stalled progress, and as of the end of the day no threshold had been agreed upon. 

by John Michinko, 11/2/2023

The story of this blog is that I have just been recently flooded (and pretty enlightened) by information regarding the dental industry and the reluctance of the dental administrations (DA’s) around the world to finally make the mercury-free shift. On the day 3 of the convention, myself and several others decided to go to the mercury in dentistry knowledge lab, where we learned about the general progress around the world according to NGO representatives from the World Alliance on Mercury-Free Dentistry.

We got to hear about the different stages of progress on phase out in different regions; the overall set goal of the total global phase-out for dental amalgam is 2030, but surprisingly a lot of countries have already made great strides to meet the goals well before that date. Gabon, for example, just amended the amalgam ban detailed in Annex A of the convention. This is a huge stride for them, considering they actually just recently opposed the phase-out several years ago. We heard from a representative in the South American region, who noted great progress in several countries, including Chile and some others who just recently starting voicing their approval of the phase-out in COP-5. The representative made a great quote in saying that “We have to think of these things as a process. We can’t expect one thing to be ready even though we have been waiting, and we may have to wait even longer, but I still believe we are moving forward.” It’s hard to get people, especially those with great experience in dental practice, to switch from what they’re used to. Things won’t happen overnight, but I think we’re seeing how the voice of NGO’s really make an impact, and it really showed in the knowledge lab. They’ve made governments aware that alternatives to amalgam DO exist, and there are no reasons to not make the change. They also have to be careful when it comes to economic classes; alternatives to dental fillings should be made to all people, not just for the rich and mercury for the poor.

The president of the World Alliance, Charlie Brown, has done especially remarkable work in organizing the alliance. When he got up to speak, he let party representatives get up and talk about the progress they’ve made, which was his way of showing the progress of him and his colleagues. After the talk, we decided to go up to him (he was offering some cool pins too) and start a conversation, after some brief small talk about Upstate New York and bottles of mercury, he invited us to come speak with him over coffee the next morning. Myself and Gary took him up on the offer, which led us to having a great conversation about dentistry and much more. We learned he was an attorney general in West Virginia, not to mention has met with dental administrations around the globe, expanding his network and alliance against mercury in dentistry. Gary connected with him via his lingual knowledge, and we got to listen to Brown’s advice about the use of language and how it changes over time (not to mention how important language use is regarding politics). Brown noted that speaking the first language of those you’re trying to reach is important, even if broken, because it speaks to their heart and they know you’re putting effort into learning their language.

We talked about the struggle of getting professions to switch practices that they are used to; it’s difficult to tell someone they are wrong when they’re they ones that are supposed to be experts, especially in the medical field. Brown wants DA’s to realize that there is no consumer demand for mercury fillings as well as no substantial economic benefits. On the contrast from the medical field, manufacturing plants tend to be more progressive in working towards health benefits in their products. We laughed about how ironic that is, because you’d figure the only thing manufacturers see are dollar signs; like, who’s going to buy my product? You’d think it’d be the reverse, but it isn’t that simple. I related to this idea he was forming, having worked in manufacturing engineering; I understand how manufacturers tend to act and mold projects to avoid any future blows to the company from an ethical standpoint. The ironic part about those projects is they tend to be the easiest, however highest priority among the company. When it came to those projects that I personally had to work on, I always felt like it would get in the way of doing the fun projects (I still had to do them anyway for the reasons I just talked about). They’re only there to avoid any bite-backs in the future for the company. Sure, it’s my little internship experience and nowhere near the scale of the dental amalgam issue, but it connects with what Brown was saying and I think I’ll continue to see that as far as I work in manufacturing & aerospace engineering in general. Point is, it’s difficult to move experts in a profession than it is to scare a manufacturer out of doing something that’ll get them in trouble. In all, that’s what makes the dental amalgam problem so difficult, at least in Brown’s eyes. I wish I could include all the other things we talked about, but this blog might be a little too long… so I’ll wrap it up with that thought. In all, a great conversation, and we wished him luck in the fight and we support the movement!

By Kaura Reyes Villarán

On day 3 of the Minamata Convention, we were able to attend different contact groups. This blog is focused in the Indigenous People in the Arctic an Amazon: Monitoring Experiences and the Implementation and the Evaluation of the Minamata Convention. It was presented by the panelists: Julio Ricardo Cusurichi Palacios from the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon, María José Andrade Cerda from the Confederation of Indigenous Nations in the Ecuadorian Amazon, Herb Nakimayak which is the President of the Inuit Circumpolar Counsil in Canada and Salmon Wilson, the Deputy Executive Secretary of the Arctic Monitoring Assessment Programme (AMAP).

Indigenous peoples in the Arctic and the Amazon are amongst the highest people exposed compared to other populations. The Arctic is receiving mercury through long-range environmental transport. On another hand, the Amazon source region is due to artisanal small scale gold mining (ASGM). According to a figure presented in the panel, the percentages of Nunavik women in three different areas across the Arctic of child-bearing age with blood mercury above the Health Canada Guideline are 78%, 47%, and 43%. Artisanal and small scale mining, biomass burning, and deforestation are the main activities involving mercury in the region. There is occupational exposure to inorganic mercury via dermal contact and inhalation during the burning of the amalgam. There is also dietary exposure to methylmercury from fish growing in perturbed and degraded ecosystems.

Madre de Dios is one of the main mines in the Amazon. It is located in Peru. It is 60% protected land and home of seven indigenous people communities. There is a problem of deforestation in an area of 115,000 ha. Andrade expressed that the government is not working with the indigenous people. The state declares emergency state and then forgets about it. She emphasized that awareness and support are necessary. There is a problem with territories water and the food that they eat is contaminated. She stated that is important to work together because no one wants another Minamata.

In Ecuador, there is a special relationship with the rivers and the land. If they get contaminated with mercury, they are scared that their generations will be affected. Since the pandemic, just one region (78-80 acres) was affected by illegal mining using almost 80 tons of mercury. People in their region are tired of having researchers take their knowledge and then go away or disappear.

Indigenous people do not have the capacities nor funds to take samples and do the research. Not only at a regional level, but also by region. All the rivers are contaminated even before reaching the Amazon in Bolivia and Peru.

It was very informative and interesting to attend this panel. Since I will represent the Latin America and Caribbean group in our simulation, it was great to hear the thoughts and concerns of the people at the Minamata Convention. It seems like there is still a lot of room to improve in the situation at the Arctic and the Amazon, but is is comforting to know that they are hearing the perspective of indigenous people in important spaces like the Minamata Convention. I hope to see soon the improvement in some of the problems presented.

by Cody VanNostrand on 10/31/2023

Hi everyone! We started our morning today with a brief break from the Minamata Convention and took trip to the end of the 18th tram line at the Switzerland-France border. This was a little place known as “Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire” or the European Council for Nuclear Research.

In reality, CERN is neither little in size nor its impact to science. Though the CERN Science Gateway we arrived at was the size of a small college campus, most of us didn’t realize that the largest CERN particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), actually covered a distance of 27 kilometers 100 meters below the surface! In the photo below, you can see the path that the LHC takes. Above the LHC in the image is Lake Geneva, where Geneva is the tiny gray and white patch to the right of the lake.

9 am:

After watching an informative video about CERN in one of the many administration buildings, we hopped onto a bus traversing the sunflower-grazed countryside, eventually arriving at CERN – Point 8. Seen in the image above as the tiny circle close to the Geneva airport, Point 8 is the home to one of the four experiements in the LHC, the LHC Beauty (LHCb) experiment. This experiment studies one of the 17 elementary particles in the Standard Model, the beauty quark, also know as the bottom quark. To detect the particles and the beauty quarks created during the collision of two beams of atoms, CERN scientists and engineers designed a series of subdetectors that work together in one large system called the LHCb Detector. Sitting at 21 meters long, 10 meters high, and 103.4 meters below ground, we were lucky enough to visit this feat of human ingenuity! The day before, on October 30th, CERN concluded its 2023 data-taking period with lead ion collisions, allowing them to safely open up their doors for our visit.

10 am:

After equiping a hard hat and a key pass, we boarded the 100 meter elevator to descend deep into Earth. At this level, the LHC is unable to recieve background radiation nor expose surface-dwellers to the intense gamma radiation created by the beam collisions. Passing through a series of tunnels, gates, and doors, we finally entered a huge bay that contained the LHCb Detector, the focal point of much particle research at CERN. After climbing the catwalks that surround the resting machine, our tour guide Dr. Bolek Bietrzyk discussed with us about how the LHCb experiment may help us learn more about antimatter. A photo of the LHCb Detector from today can be seen below!

Group photo!

After resurfacing, Dr. Bietrzyk took us on a quick tour of the LHCb Control Room, showing us how the many scientists and control panels work together to orchestrate the LHCb Detector and its many subsystems. A photo of our group is shown below.

11:30 am:

Finally, after passing through the LHCb Control Room, we took one last bus trip ending at the corner of Route Dirac and Route Lagarrigue, the location of the CERN Control Center. Here, Dr. Bietrzyk gave us a thorough explanation of the multiple paths particles may take along the CERN accelerator complex. His presentation showed the individual components that both accelerate the particle beam and control and measure its size and shape. On display below the screen were 1:1 replicas of some of these important components, such as the wire scanner, a mechanism that measures the cross-sectional distribution of the beam by passing a wire through it. The presentation may be seen below.

This presentation concluded our tour of CERN, and we stayed on CERN’s campus for lunch.

Being able to tour CERN and see the LHCb Detector in person was an amazing opportunity to witness one of the most influential scientific research centers on the planet. I was impressed by not only the technical feats of CERN and their willingness to display, share, and explain them, but the level of international collaboration and communication shown through their work.

By Caitlin Spillane

This afternoon a few of us had the privilege of attending a panel discussing the issues of mercury in the cosmetics industry. The panelists were directors and coordinators within various countries and organizations who were led by a CNN journalist. It was very eye-opening to hear accounts from so many nations on how cosmetics with mercury disproportionately affects black women compared to the rest of the world. One of the first speakers was a woman named Kheris, an influencer with the brand of “Flexin In My Complexion”, brought to my attention the reason mercury cosmetics are so popular. It causes the skin to lighten, which causes much of the demand for the product due to societal pressures and conformity. For some countries, despite banning the import of these cosmetics, there is still such a high demand that people will pay increased amounts of money to attain them. These speakers concentrated on the importance of spreading awareness for the health and environmental concerns mercury causes and giving clear and concise communication to the consumers of these products. Amira, the Executive Director of Beauty Well, spoke on how there is no safe skin whitening product and that all of them should be eliminated. Even if mercury is not in the cosmetic, it would just be replaced with another toxic chemical.

Once this panel concluded, the afternoon plenary session, and our first of the day, began. It started with the item that I found most intriguing: “mercury waste: consideration of the relevant thresholds”. This was another attempt to establish a threshold for the allowable levels for mining waste, and this convention has tried to implement a uniform level since essentially COP-1. A co-chair of technical experts was discussing reasonable levels for the past year, even having an in-person meeting this past February due to funding from Japan. From this experience, they agreed on three potential thresholds: 10, 15, or 25 milligrams per kilogram, and these were the levels discussed. Unfortunately, the opinions on these numbers were very split between different countries, with the African regional group, USA, and Switzerland saying 10 milligrams per kilogram, and Norway, Pakistan, Thailand, Islamic Republic of Iran, and Mexico leaning towards 25. China and Iraq also had the opinion that every country should have thresholds that correspond to the circumstances of its people instead of following a national one. Since an agreement was not reached, a Contact Group was made. This means a separate discussion needed to occur to solidify a decision, which happened directly after the plenary session. It was led by USA and Pakistan, and while I was not able to watch the entire Contact Group, it was interesting to see how the process worked in the first hour. They essentially go through the document line by line and try to come to an agreement on each individual part. I was surprised that this topic is still being heavily debated since many emissions still come from the gold mining industry and I was under the impression that it would have been the first one globally regulated. However, as I was able to see today, a few countries still have very strong opinions on who should be allowed to regulate each countries emissions, and refuse to budge in their beliefs.

Since today was Halloween, my favorite part of the plenary was when the representative of Chile wished the entire delegation a “Happy Halloween” once he finished his Intervention. This led to Canada going from country to country passing around a bowl of candy to the nations in its vicinity. The reason I enjoyed this so much was because all these countries had different views on the topics being discussed, but the delegates of each of them were able to come together and enjoy the candy with no hard feelings!

By Gary Shteyman

Today we visited the Palais de Nations, the headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva. After traversing several blocks of rainy Genevan road, we found ourselves in the main building, which we immediately left to make our way into the old building. The old building was used by the League of Nations, the international coalition that preceded the United Nations. The League of nations operated from 1920-1946, and today is mostly known by students as the one group you cover in history class just to make the United Nations look better. Now, the building that the League used for meetings holds old documents and relics from its time in service. The most surprising relic I saw was hidden in the very back of the room. There was a television screen with several video options available for me to click on. The very first video was a speech by the last person I would expect to be in a United Nations archive: Joseph Goebbels. Minister of Propaganda in the Third Reich, Goebbels is a name I have spoken about a lot recently, as I am currently taking Nazi Germany and the Holocaust as part of my minor in History. Through a combination of supporting documents nearby and hasty Google translation, I found out that Goebbels was there to negotiate a European-wide disarmament treaty. His country’s interest was making sure they were on equal footing with the rest of Europe post-Treaty of Versailles, so they lobbied to reduce arms . Other countries were not amicable to this arrangement, and Germany ended up leaving the League of Nations soon after. One would think this would set off alarm bells in the minds of other European diplomats, but nothing was done until Germany invaded Poland several years later. While there are many details I am leaving out, it was nevertheless fascinating to see how early multilateralism worked (or in this case, did not work) in Europe.

After we explored the old building, we went into the new building, that is currently in use by the United Nations. We were allowed to enter an empty conference room that was recently built, as well as attend a session on climate justice. After observing the Minamata Convention’s first Plenary session in the morning, I was admittedly used to the routine, and itching to explore elsewhere. This time, the most impactful thing I saw was not a video of a Nazi, but rather an infographic depicting all the various branches of the UN. Prior to this class, I thought the United Nations was this larger-than-life organization, making decisions that only affect the very tops of governments. After a few months into the semester, I’d come to terms with the fact that the UN impacts a lot more people than I thought, but not to a significant extent. Today, however, I saw that the United Nations has regulatory bodies in everything from energy to labor to tourism. There are so many subdivisions and co-organizations within the United Nations framework, one would think it was a fully functional government in its own right, and not the result of collaboration from 193 countries. I was blown away by how international diplomacy evolved from the ineffectual League of Nations to the sprawling legislative apparatus of the UN, all within 100 years. It is a lesson I will be reminded of frequently in the coming days, and one that will give me new perspective whenever I am stuck in traffic due to the roads being shut down at home due to UN meetings.

By Ananya Chandra

Today was our first day of committee at COP-5 to the Minamata Convention in Geneva, Switzerland. The introductory session began at 10am, and opened with a lovely Swiss concert trio consisting of a baritone, soprano saxophone, and an accordion player. It was a jovial opening to what was about to be a super long day! Opening statements commenced soon after, with words from in-person and virtual speakers including the Executive Director of the UNEP, the Executive Secretary to the Convention, the President of COP-5, as well as a member of the South American Yanomami tribe, and Minamata Diseases survivors, Mr. and Mrs. Sato. Their words were hopeful, outlined the severity of the public health issue of mercury and the urgency of reaching a resolution, and thankful for funders to the Convention and the external efforts made by parties to prepare for the meeting. A key point made here was that the Minamata Convention was central to many other environmental initiatives, especially the Montreal Biodiversity Framework.

The first party speaker was Burkina Faso (second picture in gallery), who echoed the urgency of the issue of mercury and emphasized the need to come to a consensus regarding steadfast solutions. Burkina Faso cited the efforts and progress made by the Africa Group during their preparatory Regional Meeting this past September in Nairobi, Kenya, where they curated about 30 amendment proposals. This bold initiative would foreshadow the tone set for the rest of the day’s meetings, as the proposals made by the African region would shape and mold the delegates’ debates into the evening of this committee day. After Burkina Faso, COP-5 President Dumitru accepted speeches from regional representatives to serve as spokespeople to their bloc’s perspectives, goals, and priorities. This included Botswana from the African Group, who talked about the particularly negative impacts of mercury pollution on the continent, initiatives to phase out mercury within Africa’s national industries, and outlined 3 proposed amendments to Annex A & B of the Convention; Pakistan from the Asia Pacific Group, who called for increased funding, more conservative measures phase out mercury products, and reaffirmed their group’s commitment to the convention requirements; North Macedonia from the Eastern European States, who supported the proposals made by the African Group, demonstrated an eagerness for learning from other member states during the convention, and emphasized a need for additional funding for the cause; Chile from the Group on Latin America and the Caribbean (GRULAC), who advocated for national mercury benchmarks, emphasized prioritizing women and girls due to the gendered scope of the mercury issue, and spoke about the needs for more funding; and Spain from the Western European and Others group, who spoke about a commitment to the 5th COP, and the group’s desire to work collaboratively to achieve the goals of the Minamata Convention. After lengthy administrative speeches from the secretariat about committee proceedings, the plenary eventually began discussions about item 4, the review of the financial mechanism.

At 5pm, I moved from the Plenary to a contact group on Annex A & B. Here, the conversation was more specific and engaging. Parties were discussing the amendments brought into debate by the Africa Group, deliberating about regulating mercury in fluorescent lighting (CFL.i and CFL.ni), mercury in cosmetics (mostly skin lightening creams, used heavily within Asia and Africa), and mercury in dental amalgams. And the debate was fruitful! Apart from some disagreements about starting years for implementation (2025 vs. 2027 vs. 2030), most parties were on the same page about progressing with these regulations and amendments to improve the global situation on mercury! This was both inspiring and exciting, and the evening was rounded off with a lovely reception on behalf of the Swiss, with plenty of hors d’oeuvres and desserts!