by Daily News

GABORONE - The launch of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP) marks the beginning of a project to strengthen national capacity and enhance knowledge and understanding of persistant organic pollutants.

Opening the inception workshop on persistent organic pollutants, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism, Lucas Gakale, said the threat to human health and the environment led to several interventions with regard to the safe use of chemicals in general.

Gakale said the most recent intervention, which is global in scope, is the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants.

He said this calls for banning of the production and use of persistent organic pollutants to protect human health and the environment.

Over the past 40 years, he said, there has been a growing awareness about the threats posed to human health and the environment by the release of persistent organic pollutants.

He said most of the persistent organic pollutants are pesticides while others are industrial chemicals or by- products of industrial processes or a combustion of both.

Gakale said persistnet organic pollutants, including aldrin, DDT, chlordane dioxins have a potential to travel great distances through various media such as air, water and living organisms; they can cause diseases such as cancer, allergies, disorders of nervous and reproductive systems.

Parties to the Stockholm Convention are required, among others, to prohibit and take legal and administrative action necessary to eliminate production and use of persistent organic polutants. The convention will also restrict the production and use of DDT for prevention of malaria.

Botswana became party to the Stockholm Convention in 2002 and this global commitment enables the country to get funds from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to assist it to fulfil its obligations.

Funds will be used for developing a national implementation plan to provide basic and essential levels of information to enable policy and strategic decisions to be made. BOPA