This week 156 countries convened for the first meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention on mercury — yet at the same time a new UN report [1] shows mercury mining has skyrocketed in the last 5 years.
Much of that mercury is used in artisanal and small scale gold mining (ASGM), the largest source of global mercury pollution.
Currently, countries do not have reliable information about trade in neighbouring countries and within their own region. This problem is compounded where borders between countries are ‘porous’, and a significant portion of trade is informal or illegal. For example, mercury may enter a region through legal trade to one country, but then be traded illegally across borders to neighbouring countries.
read more... http://eeb.org/54951-2/
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