JOHANNESBURG After a night-long session, delegates from 122 countries on Sunday reached an agreement to set up an international persistent organic pollutants (POPS) treaty, the UN Environmental Program (UNEP) said in a statement.
The agreement, reached after six days of talks in Johannesburg and co-hosted by South Africa and Denmark, will be signed in Stockholm, Sweden in May next year, and the treaty will become legally binding once it has been ratified by 50 countries, the statement said. The so-called "dirty dozen" chemicals include industrial byproducts such as dioxin, PCBs and pesticides such as DDT, reintroduced by South Africa in 1999 following an increase in malaria cases from 4,693 in 1991 to 54,746 this year.
The chemicals have been linked to cancer, birth defects and other genetic abnormalities. Although delegates at four previous summits have reached a general agreement on the objectives of the global treaty to eliminate and reduce he use of the chemicals, many details remained to be ironed out. Earlier last week, UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer indicted that a treaty would include limited exemptions for certain uses that cannot be phased out yet, such as DDT to fight malaria in developing countries.
(DPA)