Publication details
GMP data warehouse – A supporting tool of effectiveness evaluation of the Stockholm convention on persistent organic pollutants
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Environmental Software Systems. Computer Science for Environmental Protection. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology. |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-319-89935-0.pdf |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89935-0_16 |
| Keywords | Stockholm Convention; Global Monitoring Plan; POPs Database; Data collection; Visualisation; Analysis; Standardisation; Data structure |
| Description | The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants was adopted on 22 May 2001 in Stockholm, Sweden, and entered into force on 17 May 2004. The convention is focused on selected persistent organic pollutants (POPs) – chemicals that represent a significant risk for the environment and living organisms, including the humans. Although POPs form a heterogeneous group from the chemical point of view, their common characteristics include acute or chronic toxicity and high resistance to trans-formation processes, which makes them capable of long-range transport and accu-mulation in tissues of the living organisms. The Stockholm Convention (SC) and its annexes currently (2016) contain 26 se-lected POPs (or their groups), for which the contracting Parties must adopt measures to eliminate or reduce their production and use or minimize the unintentional releases. In other words, the list contains both chemicals that were or have been intentionally produced and used (e.g. DDT and other POP pesticides in agriculture, polychlorinated biphenyls in industry) and chemicals that are unintentionally formed and released during anthropogenic processes (e.g. production of dioxins during combustion pro-cesses). Naturally, adoption and application of (legal/technical) measures for the reduction of environmental burden by POPs is not the only step that should be implemented; these measures should be also continuously evaluated in terms of their feasibility and effectiveness. Effectiveness evaluation of the Stockholm Convention is defined in its Article 16. Among others, this article requires establishment and operation of the Global Monitoring Plan for Persistent Organic Pollutants (GMP) – a tool for the collec-tion of global data on POPs levels, assessment of their spatial and temporal trends and thus generating information on whether the environmental burden by POPs de-crease and measures adopted by the Convention are effective in reality. |