Resources

Check out this infographic to learn more about how toxic mercury impacts biodiversity and human health all around the world.

From human-made sources, this highly hazardous chemical accumulates in many ecosystems, such as tropical forests, mangroves, oceans and the Arctic, leading to detrimental impacts on biodiversity.

The publication explores "opportunities for generating co-benefits through coherent implementation of the Minamata Convention and Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework".

The objective of this report is to analyse, in response to decision MC-4/12, how the implementation of the Minamata Convention can contribute to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) and to identify opportunities for coherent and mutually supportive implementation to generate co-benefits for the GBF and the Minamata Convention.

The Global Mercury Partnership organised an information sharing session on Minamata Initial Assessments (MIAs): latest trends, key findings and data analysis tools, on Tuesday 27 September 2022.

The webinar presented initial analysis of aggregated data from 74 MIA mercury inventories and explored patterns and trends in the data.

Creating a Hub for Regional Mercury Monitoring

Laboratory networks for mercury and other contaminant analyses in areas throughout the world, especially in mercury hotspots, will provide important information for the assessment of risk—to humans, wildlife, and ecosystems—in these regional environments.

BRI and the Nexus3 Foundation, in collaboration with other nongovernmental organizations, are leading a three-year project to support the Government of Indonesia in restricting mercury supplies, especially for the artisanal small-scale gold mining sector.

Mercury emissions, deposition, and releases into the environment explain only part of the spatial story of mercury pollution. Ecosystem sensitivity and food web relationships help further define the actual risks to human and ecosystem health.

Minamata online is an initiative from the Secretariat of the Minamata Convention.

Environmental concentrations of mercury (Hg) have increased three-fold globally due to human industrial activities. This inorganic mercury enters ecosystems through the air (e.g., from coal-fired power plants and incinerators), water (e.g., from chlor-alkali facilities and artisanal small- scale gold mining), and land (e.g., from landfills and other contaminated sites).

This information sheet provides an overview of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Global Mercury Partnership for prospective partners.

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This summary document presents the main findings of the technical document in plain language. Recognizing the relevance of the results of the Global Mercury Assessment 2018 for policy makers, this section presents key findings of highest policy relevance.

This update to the Global Mercury Assessment 2013 provides the most recent information available for the worldwide emissions to air, releases to water, and transport of mercury in atmospheric and aquatic environments.

The Technical Background Report to the Global Mercury Assessment 2018 was produced by an international team of experts convened through a collaboration between UN Environment and the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP).

The Minamata Convention on Mercury is a global treaty to protect human health and the environment from the adverse effects of mercury.

The Convention was adopted on 10 October 2013 at Kumamoto (Japan) on the occasion of the Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Minamata Convention on Mercury held from 7 to 11 October 2013 and entered into force on 16 August 2017. 

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The Global Mercury Observation System (GMOS) is a first attempt to conduct worldwide measurements of mercury from both natural and anthropogenic sources. The GMOS is a five year project (2010-2015) funded by the European Commission, leaded by the Institute of Atmospheric Pollution Research of the National Research Council of Italy.

The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) is an intergovernmental organization working to improve the availability, access and use of Earth observations for the benefit of society. GEO works to actively improve and coordinate global EO systems and promote broad, open data sharing.

The Task Force on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution (TF HTAP) is an international scientific cooperative effort to improve the understanding of the intercontinental transport of air pollution across the Northern Hemisphere.

UN Environment's Toolkit for identification and quantification of mercury releases is intended to assist countries to identify and quantify the sources of mercury releases. With the Toolkit, a comprehensive national mercury releases inventory can be developed.

This report, Mercury in the Global Environment, presents data on mercury concentrations in biota of concern in Article 19 of the Minamata Convention (i.e., marine and freshwater fish, sea turtles, birds and marine mammals), which are extracted from the GBMS database. Mercury concentrations from key biota are presented and compared geographically and taxonomically through Case Studies.

This visualization shows estimates of anthropogenic mercury emissions by country, region, and industry sector. Data are for year 2010 from the 2013 UNEP Global Mercury Assessment.

The bar graph shows the distribution of emissions by sector. The diagram on the lower right shows country and regional proportions of total emissions.

UN Environment Chemicals and Health Branch is developing and populating a databank on chemicals analyses, in particular on persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and mercury (Hg).

As part of the 13th International Conference on Mercury as a Global Pollutant, teams of scientists prepared syntheses of the current state of mercury science. The syntheses address four topics:

The world’s nations adopted the Minamata Convention on Mercury to protect human health and the environment from mercury pollution. A good understanding of mercury supply, trade and demand is critical to effective implementation of the Convention.

Academic journal paper published in Science of the Total Environment: Evaluating the effectiveness of the Minamata Convention (as required by Article 22) is a crucial component to ensure that it meets this objective.