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Im neuen Entwurf des Grundsatzprogramms der CDU wird eine engere Zusammenarbeit mit Frankreich und Polen im sogenannten Weimarer Dreieck gefordert. Die Ampel-Parteien hätten die Zusammenarbeit mit dem Partner Polen zu lange schweifen gelassen.

In 2013, a new treaty, the Minamata Convention on Mercury, was adopted by a global community under the auspices of UNEP. The Convention is named after Minamata Bay in Japan to remember the lessons of the tragic health damage by industrial mercury pollution in the 1950s and 1960s. The aim of the treaty is to protect the environment and the human health from anthropogenic emissions and releases of the toxic heavy metal. It regulates the entire life cycle of mercury – its supply, trade, use, emissions, releases, storage, and the management of waste and contaminated sites.

By Charlie Brown
WASHINGTON, Dec 12 2023 (IPS)

As it strives to be the prototype environmental treaty of this era, the Minamata Convention on Mercury continues its razor-like focus on ending all major uses of mercury. Emerging as the force leading the charge is the Global South, particularly the Africa Region, whose proposals led to hard-charging changes addressing dental amalgam, mercury-based skin creams, and fluorescent lights.

At the Fifth Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention (“COP5”), concluding in Geneva on 3 November, countries debated the African Amalgam Amendment, calling for the phase out of amalgam. The Africa region, led by Roger Baro, the Environment Minister of Burkina Faso, strategically built alliances beforehand, starting with the crucial 27-nation European Union.

Civil society was inspired watching one delegate after another rising to support the phase out of mercury in dentistry: from West Asia (Saudi Arabia, Jordan) to South Asia (Pakistan) and Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Vietnam), from Oceania (Australia, Tuvalu) to South America (Argentina) and non-E.U. Europe (Norway, Switzerland).

But several dissenters, while agreeing action is needed, were not yet amenable to a phase out date. Emerging therefore was the worldwide consensus to take three giant leaps toward mercury-free dentistry:

• For the first time, the treaty recognizes that countries can phase out amalgam – and more and more have already succeeded!
• The nations amended the treaty to add a new requirement: those countries that have “not yet phased out dental amalgam” must submit an action plan or a report on their progress.
• Most exciting of all, the nations inserted into the treaty, in brackets, a phase-out date for amalgam – an action that is not legally binding but which automatically agendizes a debate and a vote, at COP6 in 2025, on whether and when to phase out amalgam.

The Africa Region led the movement to end the use of two other mercury products, gaining phase-out dates in the Minamata Convention for mercury in skin cream (UN Convention Agrees to Phase Mercury Out of Cosmetics by 2025 – Zero Mercury) and for all fluorescent light bulbs (https://www.clasp.ngo/updates/cop5-decision/).

Africans, both government and civil society, are grimly determined to protect its people from mercury exposure and not to let its continent be made a dumping ground for toxic products, including amalgam.

In the national capitals, the march to mercury-free dentistry continues unabated. In October, Gabon decided amalgam is no longer allowed – and huge credit here goes to Serge Molly of Libreville, a long-time leader at the Minamata Convention.

This month the European Parliament and the Council of Europe debate when—not if—to phase out amalgam in all 27 member states (a dozen already have). Other Parties are ending amalgam piecemeal . . . banning its use in children, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers . . . or in the military . . . or in government programs.

No consumer or parent these days wants amalgam; no one with the power to choose accepts a mercury implant in the mouth. Where choice reigns—the private sector—amalgam use is ending.

Well-ensconced inside government bureaucracies, the mercury lobby imposes amalgam outrageously on powerless consumers—the indigenous, the poor, the racial minorities, the immigrants, the institutionalized, the privates in the army and the seamen in the navy.

Unchecked by their superiors, the condemnable chief dental officers of the U.S. and Canada (1) ignore their legal duty to comply with the Minamata Convention Children’s Amendment, (2) violate their Hippocratic Oath daily by outright defiance of the recommendations against use by both Health Canada and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and (3) maintain mercury-toxic workplaces for dental workers while they sit protected from mercury exposure in their plush government bureaus.

The great Minamata Convention had its genesis from studies showing mercury in the Arctic, drifting there via air or waterways, was harming indigenous peoples. In stark defiance of the spirit of Minamata, Health Canada dentists fly planeloads of mercury fillings daily into the Arctic and sub-Arctic, leaving the dental mercury behind to pollute the Tribal Lands.

Equally ignominiously, the U.S. Indian Health Service has ignored for seven years the resolution from the National Congress of American Indians to cease amalgam use on Tribal Lands.

To the profound disappointment of the environmental community, Canada’s Environment & Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault MP—despite his superb résumé fighting toxins while an NGO leader—does nothing to reduce amalgam use by Health Canada, even though his ministry is the lead at Minamata.

It is time for Minister Guilbault to condemn this wholesale usage of mercury fillings that is poisoning tribal lands. Inaction by ECC Canada portends another Grassy Narrows scandal in the making.

Rather than apply President Biden’s splendid priority of environmental justice to the U.S. Public Health Service, Assistant Secretary for Health Admiral Rachel Levine opts for physician-to-dentist professional courtesy—giving carte blanche to the pro-mercury chief dental officers to pollute Tribal lands, prisons, Army forts, Navy bases, and minority-dominated inner cities.

By the stroke of a pen, the 4-star Admiral could order the dentists under her command at the Public Health Service to end amalgam use—and the World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry calls on her to do so now.

Dentists still implanting this colonial-era primitive device do so not because they need to; but because they want to. Inaction in Ottawa and Washington must end; these two federal governments are the major reason that North American oral health care remains two-tiered: choice for the middle class and mercury for the powerless.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Excerpt:

The writer is President, World Alliance for Mercury-Free Dentistry

Gasboiler in slowenischen Neubauten sollen nach einem reformierten Energiegesetz, das die Regierung letzte Woche verabschiedet hat, verboten werden. Die Maßnahme war zuvor auf breite Kritik gestoßen.

"Pour aider la République démocratique du Congo, j'arrête de vaper", déclare Micah Ndango. La tiktokeuse a décidé d'arrêter d'utiliser des e-cigarettes après cinq ans de vapotage, a t-elle annoncé dans une vidéo qui a été visionnée plus de 15 000 fois.

Gentechnik ist nicht nur in Deutschland ein heiß diskutiertes Thema. Auch die EU-Länder sind gespalten, wenn es um die von der EU-Kommission vorgeschlagene Lockerung der Regeln für neue Gentechnik geht.

Tuesday, 12 December

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Tuesday, 12 December

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Tuesday, 12 December

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Tuesday, 12 December

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

Italien könnte die Reform des Europäischen Stabilitätsmechanismus (ESM), die bis Ende des Jahres ratifiziert werden soll, verzögern. Die Koalitionspartner Forza Italia und Lega haben im Vorfeld des entscheidenden EU-Gipfels in dieser Woche weiterhin unterschiedliche Ansichten.

Des millions d'euros du budget de l'État et de la mairie de Tirana ont été dépensés pour un incinérateur à déchets... qui n'existait pas. Après trois ans d'enquête, l'Unité spéciale anti-corruption (SPAK) a enfin lancé les mandats d'arrêt. Récit d'une arnaque à grande échelle.

- Articles / Une - Diaporama, Courrier des Balkans, Albanie, Défense, police et justice, Une - Diaporama - En premier

Des millions d'euros du budget de l'État et de la mairie de Tirana ont été dépensés pour un incinérateur à déchets... qui n'existait pas. Après trois ans d'enquête, l'Unité spéciale anti-corruption (SPAK) a enfin lancé les mandats d'arrêt. Récit d'une arnaque à grande échelle.

- Articles / Une - Diaporama, Courrier des Balkans, Albanie, Défense, police et justice, Une - Diaporama - En premier

C'est un petit pas, mais il est important. L'Autriche bloquait l'entrée de la Bulgarie et de la Roumanie dans l'espace Schengen mais, cette année, Vienne a annoncé qu'elle était prête à lever partiellement son véto pour les personnes qui voyagent en avion. À une condition : que Bucarest et Sofia prennent en charge des migrants arrivés en Autriche.

- Le fil de l'Info / Une - Diaporama, Courrier des Balkans, Bulgarie, Roumanie, Questions européennes, Libéralisation des visas

Aujourd’hui dans L’Expresso : la CDU veut fortifier le Triangle de Weimar, feu vert du Portugal à l'adhésion de l'Ukraine et des Balkans, la Suède présente une nouvelle aide financière à l'Ukraine et règlement sur l'IA

Les députés français ont rejeté lundi (11 décembre) le projet de loi sur l’immigration du gouvernement à 270 voix contre 265, l’extrême droite, les conservateurs et la coalition de gauche faisant front commun. C’est la première fois en 25 ans qu’une motion de rejet préalable a été adoptée.

Norwegen und Großbritannien werden ein maritimes Bündnis anführen, um die Ukraine beim Aufbau ihrer Küsten- und Seeverteidigung zu unterstützen, hieß es nach einem Treffen der Verteidigungsminister beider Länder am Montag (11. Dezember).

Une alliance plus forte entre l’Allemagne, la France et la Pologne, bloc géopolitique connu sous le nom de « Triangle de Weimar »,  est l’un des piliers du nouveau manifeste de l’Union chrétienne-démocrate d’Allemagne (CDU).

Das neue Einwanderungsgesetz der französischen Regierung scheiterte am Montag (11. Dezember), nachdem Rechtsaußen, Konservative und Linke überraschend geschlossen einen Antrag auf Ablehnung unterstützten.

An anti-ship cruise missile launched from Houthi-controlled Yemen struck a commercial tanker vessel, causing a fire and damage but no casualties, the US military said in a statement on Tuesday (12 December).

Le parlement polonais a élu Donald Tusk Premier ministre lundi, après que Mateusz Morawiecki, le candidat du parti Droit et Justice (PiS), précédemment au pouvoir, n’ait pas réussi à remporter un vote de confiance.