Today was the first day of the convention, so when we arrived, we went directly to the opening session.\u00a0\u00a0When we got into the meeting area, there were four people playing music at the front of the room.\u00a0\u00a0We were sitting above all the delegates, so we got to watch them mingle until the President began the meeting.\u00a0\u00a0After a couple of speakers and a video, the President announced that the opening statements would begin.\u00a0\u00a0Due to a lack of time, only a couple of countries, who represented a greater region, delivered their opening statements. The opening statements that struck me the most were from Indonesia, the Asia Pacific, and a victim of mercury poisoning.\u00a0\u00a0Indonesia gave very specific goals, unlike the other countries.\u00a0\u00a0They said that they hoped to fully ban dental amalgams by 2020.\u00a0\u00a0I also really enjoyed the Asia Pacific opening statement.\u00a0\u00a0It was really similar to the Asia opening statement from our simulation (they requested funding and technological help).\u00a0\u00a0Finally, as a part of the opening statements, the convention had a victim of mercury poisoning speak.\u00a0\u00a0It was very powerful and served as a call to all countries to make mercury history.<\/p>\n
During lunch, I decided to attend a side event on planetGOLD, a program which was allotted $45 million to decrease anthropogenic emissions from AGSM.\u00a0\u00a0I learned a lot about the issues within the AGSM sector as well as the problems that are faced when trying to get miners to switch to more environmentally friendly methods.\u00a0\u00a0The speakers on the panel were well-spoken and very interesting.\u00a0\u00a0I really enjoyed how the speakers discussed that planetGOLD views the miners as experts.\u00a0\u00a0PlanetGOLD makes an effort to understand the miners and educate them in order to create change instead of just walking in and changing everything.<\/p>\n
The President opened the afternoon plenary.\u00a0\u00a0Almost immediately the BRS secretariat spoke about a joint secretariat.\u00a0\u00a0The EU proposed CRP3 which suggested that the BRS secretariat and Minamata secretariat share the relevant services. The US and Brazil were the only countries that spoke against the idea of a joint secretariat.\u00a0\u00a0They felt as if autonomy was critical for the conventions.\u00a0\u00a0Next, the President brought up an effectiveness evaluation.\u00a0\u00a0Most of the parties wanted more experts, an attribution report, and adequate monitoring to decrease knowledge gaps. My favorite part of the entire day was when it was decided that Indonesia would host the next Minamata convention.\u00a0\u00a0They played a very interesting video showing Bali and the convention center.\u00a0\u00a0Colombia stepped down so that Indonesia could host.\u00a0\u00a0When Indonesia was picked, I saw true cooperation between countries and I really enjoyed that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today was the first day of the convention, so when we arrived, we went directly to the opening session.\u00a0\u00a0When we got into the meeting area, there were four people playing music at the front of the room.\u00a0\u00a0We were sitting above all the delegates, so we got to watch them mingle until the President began the… Continue reading Day 1 – Hannah Austgen<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stodorov.expressions.syr.edu\/uncop3-geneva-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stodorov.expressions.syr.edu\/uncop3-geneva-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stodorov.expressions.syr.edu\/uncop3-geneva-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stodorov.expressions.syr.edu\/uncop3-geneva-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stodorov.expressions.syr.edu\/uncop3-geneva-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stodorov.expressions.syr.edu\/uncop3-geneva-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126,"href":"https:\/\/stodorov.expressions.syr.edu\/uncop3-geneva-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions\/126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stodorov.expressions.syr.edu\/uncop3-geneva-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stodorov.expressions.syr.edu\/uncop3-geneva-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stodorov.expressions.syr.edu\/uncop3-geneva-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}