| Montreal, 4/03/2002 – The Executive Director of the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) today highlighted the success of an initiative to eliminate use of the persistent organic pollutant DDT. The Mexican DDT initiative brought together two communities—the health policy community and the environment community—who share similar concerns but rarely come together to address them, said CEC Executive Director Janine Ferretti, speaking at the meeting of the Health and Environment Ministers of the Americas in Ottawa.
The DDT initiative was one of the first projects undertaken in the world to implement the Stockholm POPs convention. The ongoing story of this effort to eliminate DDT from the environment had particular relevance to the conference because of its cross-sectoral focus and its emphasis on the cooperation between the health and environmental sectors of government.
In 1995, the Council of Ministers of the CEC created a North American Working Group on the Sound Management of Chemicals responsible for, among other areas, developing North American Regional Action Plans to reduce or eliminate priority toxic substances based on the list of the 12 persistent organic pollutants listed in the UNEP Governing Council Decision of 1995.
The first North American Regional Action Plans developed by the CEC's Sound Management of Chemicals working group were focused on PCBs, mercury, chlordane and DDT. These efforts have achieved results. Chlordane and DDT are no longer produced or used in North America. Regional action plans to reduce the presence of dioxins, furans and hexachlorobenzene, and to assure trinational cooperation on environmental monitoring and assessment are being developed. Also, lead and lindane are being evaluated as candidates for future North American Regional Action Plans.
The objective of the DDT Action Plan was to reduce human and environmental exposure through the joint efforts of Canada, Mexico and the United States, including the sharing of experiences with other countries in the Americas. The regional perspective arises from the region-wide interest in malaria control.
The CEC supported Mexico by contributing US$780,000 over a four-year period. The results achieved by the Mexican government have not only allowed it to meet its commitment to reduce DDT usage by 80%, two years ahead of schedule, but also permitted it to eliminate DDT usage through new alternatives that avoid the use of any persistent and bioaccumulative chemical, to the extent possible.
North American cooperation has been fundamental for the initiative's success, and has had the support of the US Environmental Protection Agency and Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) from the start.
The CEC and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) have promoted the establishment of a Regional DDT Program for Mexico and Central America. The Global Environment Facility (GEF) funded the proposal development phase in 1999, with the participation of seven countries in the Central American isthmus (Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Belize and Panama), in addition to Mexico.
The CEC, PAHO, Mexico and the Central American countries together pooled US$440,000 and, with a US$330,000 grant from the GEF, developed a proposal for a three-year cooperative program in Central America. The objective of this project is to demonstrate that malaria vectors in Mexico and Central America can be cost-effectively controlled in an environmentally sound way without the use of DDT. The partnership of the CEC, PAHO, Mexico and the seven Central American countries amounting to US$4 million would leverage another US$7.5 million from GEF, providing the initiative with US$11 million dollars in resources.
This is the first project the GEF has considered related to the implementation of the Stockholm POPs Convention. A decision is expected shortly.
This DDT initiative provides valuable lessons about collaboration among international agencies. It is the first time the CEC, PAHO and UNEP have worked together, pooling expertise and resources to leverage support from GEF. In today's world of limited resources, maximizing the synergies among international agencies is essential to making concrete progress.
The CEC was established to build cooperation among the NAFTA partners—Canada, Mexico and the United States—in protecting shared environments, with a particular focus on the opportunities and challenges presented by continent-wide free trade.
| 
