NATIONAL PROGRAMME ON POPS AMENDED

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ The cabinet meeting on Saturday approved the amendments to the National programme on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), in accordance with the duties of Mongolia before the Stockholm Convention on POPs (2001). Persistent organic pollutants are a group of persistent substances that significantly harm human health and the environment, cause cancers, affect genes, and survive in nature decades without decomposition. Mongolia ratified in 2004 the Stockholm Convention on POPs that was enacted in 2001 in order to protect people’s health and environment from the threats. The first national programme on POPs was adopted in 2006, in observance of duties before the Convention. The POPs Review Committee has obligated the member- countries to renew the national programmes and to take required measures, due to the addition of ten substances to the POPs list. In a scope of the obligation, a new national programme has been developed. It aims to improve the legal environment regulating the matters related to POPs, such as collecting and recycling of industrial chemical wastes, to establish an eco-friendly management of disposal, and to reduce harm to human health. As a result of the two-stage programme, the legal environment for disposal and recycling of wastes containing POPs will improve and the consumption of POPs containing products will reduce. Management for collecting, transportation, recycling, processing and preserving of toxic waste, electric and auto vehicle scraps will be improved.