LOME, Togo, Apr 26 (IPS) – The author is President, World Alliance for Mercury-Free DentistryThe Minamata Convention on Mercury, a stellar success story thus far, has been favorably in comparison with the prototype success story for a treaty on toxins: the Montreal Protocol. Both had a single centered mission; each gained common assist throughout the globe; each matched technological innovation with environmental science to discard previous polluting strategies.
But rising after hidden negotiations with the mercury foyer is a GEF venture with UNEP endorsement which ignores, if not outright defies, the need of the Parties. As COP5 approaches, right here is the take a look at case on whether or not Minamata continues to maneuver our small planet towards an finish to anthropogenic mercury—or develop into mired in company seize.
For the previous decade, the Parties repeatedly rejected the agenda of the dental mercury foyer—the dentists who nonetheless cling to the nineteenth century tooth-unfriendly pollutant amalgam, regardless of it being 50% mercury and a well being threat to their very own dental nurses; and the waste business, whose apparent self-interest is to maintain amalgam going into perpetuity to promote their tools.
So, the dental mercury foyer met repeatedly with GEF and UNEP employees in periods closed to the Parties . . . closed to the Minamata Secretariat . . . closed to the Minamata Bureau . . . closed to the handfuls of CSOs who’ve actively pushed for a treaty to part out anthropogenic mercury.
Violating their very own requirements, GEF and UNEP constructed (or allowed with out objection) a venture that bypasses the Children’s Amendment fully in favor of making an attempt to redirect the mission of the treaty from use to waste—the very place repeatedly rejected by the Parties since 2013.
Separators don’t promote nicely as a result of they don’t and can’t get rid of mercury waste; they solely catch the mercury within the dentist workplace—not the mercury implanted in folks—they usually require an enormous infrastructure to make sure that even that partial waste, from dental places of work, is correctly disposed of. Only one answer ends mercury waste from amalgam: the change to mercury-free dentistry.
The #1 beneficiary of this Greenwashing is the world’s solely main publicly traded dental merchandise maker increasing gross sales of amalgam: Southern Dental Industries (SDI) of Melbourne. While its rivals exited or scaled again amalgam—or by no means made it within the first place—SDI seized their exits as its alternative to nook the amalgam market.
Just six weeks in the past, in a name to its shareholders, SDI’s CEO boasted about its enormous will increase in amalgam gross sales, detailed its entry into new markets to promote amalgam, and affirmed her private aim of ‘maximizing’ amalgam gross sales! Wriggling right into a GEF-UNEP amalgam “reduction” venture whereas growing amalgam gross sales, SDI is the only dental merchandise firm in a venture partnership position—therefore given market entry denied to their mercury-free rivals in nations on three continents. Here is a traditional case of Corporate Capture!
GEF’s requirement of stakeholder participation at the earliest stage was papered over through a legerdemain: a false declare that the NGOs are taking part. Falsely listed as members are the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry, Bangladesh-based Environment and Social Development Organization, Germany-based European Network for Environmental Medicine, Philippines-based BAN Toxics, Nepal-based Center for Public Health and Environmental Development, Cameroun-based Centre de Recherche et d’Education pour le Développement, and U.S.-based Consumers for Dental Choice.
Equally troubling, RAP-AL Uruguay, who leads the marketing campaign for mercury-free dentistry for Latin America, is preliminarily assigned to advertise separator gross sales—a aim anathema to its very mission.
UNEP high brass in Nairobi and GEF high brass in Washington have to act:
- • First, to find out who on their staffs submitted the plethora of false claims of CSO participation;
• Second, to kill this venture, in order that the Minamata Convention on Mercury doesn’t develop into the treaty about company seize and greenwashing;
• Third, to make use of GEF funding to enact the need of the Parties as said unequivocally in its 2022 Amendment: cease inserting mercury fillings, forever and all areas, in youngsters and girls who’re pregnant or breastfeeding.
IPS UN Bureau
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© Inter Press Service (2023) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
