POPs and Human Health

COMMUNICATION OF THE HEAD OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION DELEGATION
AT THE CONFERENCE OF AUTHORISED REPRESENTATIVES
FOR APPROVAL AND SIGNATURE OF STOCKHOLM CONVENTION ON PERSISTENT ORGANIC POLLUTANTS

Dear Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen!

First of all, on behalf of the Russian Delegation, I would like to express our gratitude to the Government of the Kingdom of Sweden for the invitation to participate in the final act of development, approval and signature of Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, and for cordial hospitality of the host Party.

It is rather symbolic, that signature of this new important international inter-governmental treaty is occurring in Stockholm, the city which hosted 30 years ago the First International Conference for Environment and Development, that paved the way to broad international co-operation in environmental protection and resource conservation, forming the key precondition for sustainable economic growth and improvement of living standards of people.

Representatives of the Russian Federation actively participated at all stages of development of the Convention.

As it is well known, the process of development of this extremely complex Convention involved representatives of more than 120 countries, and representatives of numerous non-governmental organisations observed the process.

Substantial differences in economic and technological development of many countries created objectively serious obstacles for identification of appropriate and feasible solutions and only the common aim of elimination of health hazards of persistent organic pollutants, allowed us to succeed finally. In general, the Russian Party is satisfied by the results reached.

Due to its geographic location, Russia is interested in approval of the Convention by the highest possible number of countries. The Russian Federation is a country of the North, 60% of the national territory (10 million square kilometres) are located in Arctic or sub-Arctic zones with low temperatures. In these zones persistent organic pollutants lose their capacity for further long-range migration and accumulate. Therefore, we are interested in approval of an efficient international treaty for prevention of environmental contamination by these super-toxicants.

From the list of 12 persistent organic pollutants - subjects of the Convention - in our case, the most serious problems are associated only with polychlorinated byphenils, which were produced in our country since 1939. Since 1993, their production in Russia was cancelled, but, according to the stock inventories, there are about 30 thousand tons of PCBs in electric equipment and installations (serving as dielectric materials in capacitors and transformers).

The problems of development of production capacity to ensure supply of alternative dielectrics, replacement of huge stocks of accumulated PCBs and elimination of PCBs by an environmentally sound method - all these problems suggest a major technically difficult and costly program that might require about 25 years for its implementation.

The above period of time may be reduced to the extent of technical and finance assistance, that might be provided to us. Without external assistance, the process of prevention of PCB contamination and environmental improvement in the Russian Federation, and in the whole Arctic region would require several decades.

The Russian Party notes with satisfaction, that assistance provided to Russia by Arctic countries in the course of PCB inventory works, allowed us to identify the scale of PCB problem in a fairly short period of time. However, the inventory was just a first step, taken to address this major problem. Further stages should be focused on practical measures to replace and eliminate PCBs, according to preliminary estimates, we will need about $180 million for the whole period of fulfilment of our commitments.

As it is well known, key actions for addressing the problems of anthropogenic releases of dioxins and furans into the environment include modernisation and improvement of technologies and equipment, and these actions require major expenses for modernisation of production facilities.

Technical and finance assistance of countries, that have achieved major successes in development and implementation of best technologies, may play a major or even decisive role in implementation of practical actions for elimination of dioxins and furans at the global level.

From our point of view, specific arrangements of the mechanism of technical and finance assistance, and especially amounts of the assistance should be identified depending on anticipated results - i.e. how efficiently provision of the assistance could reduce environmental contamination by a given POP at the global level.

At the time being, incomplete national procedures of agreeing the draft Convention prevent our Delegation from singing the Convention, but we hope, that we will be able to accede to the Convention in the nearest future.