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Slovakia's Environment Minister László Miklós signs US$ 20 million UNDP-GEF-UNIDO POPs project
Vienna, Austria, 16 February 2006
On 16 February, 2006, Environment Minister of the Slovak Republic, László Miklós, and UNIDO
Director-General Kandeh Yumkella signed an agreement on a US$ 20 million Global Environment Faciliy
(GEF)
- funded demonstration project for the destruction of Persistent Organic
Pollutants (POPs) waste, using non-combustion technologies. Persistent Organic Pollutants are
UNIDO'S priority area with the Global Environment Facility. UNIDO's activities with Persistent
Organic Pollutants go back to the 1970s and actually predate the word itself, which came into popular
use in the 1980s. UNIDO will be responsible for the implementation and execution of all project
activities. The Ministry of Environment of the Slovak Republic will have overall responsibility for
national environmental management and will coordinate all participating Slovakian institutions. UNDP
will be monitoring and evaluating the project via its Regional Center in Bratislava, which will also
assist and coordinate stakeholder activities. Public-private partnerships, supported by local civil
society organizations and represented at international level by the Environmental Health Fund, are also considered
central to the success of the project.
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The signing of the Slovak agreement was a significant milestone in a journey through the rigorous
GEF Project Cycle commencing with
the implementation of the so-called GEF
PDF-B project back in May 2001. Prior to that, in April and May, 2000, UNIDO and its
International Centre for Science and High Technology ICS-Triest gathered experts together to examine
destruction technologies for polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) -
one of the best known of the twelve compound classes defined as Persistent
Organic Pollutants.
The main focus of Slovakian project is the destruction of PCBs using non-combustion technologies. The report of the UNIDO-ICS meeting and other documents relating to the preparatory phase of the project are available here to view or download. The project will be implemented over 6 years and will serve as a model for other countries. The GEF Council Work Programme Submission giving exhaustive detail on the project is available here to view or download.
Throughout the preparatory and formulation (PDF) phase of the project, UNIDO has worked very closely with the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Construction and Regional Development of the Slovakian Government, the private sector and the local NGO community. This close cooperation and coordination has made project activities very cost-effective. The arrangement set up in the preparatory phase will be continued during the full Programme and Project implementation. The Government of the Slovak Republic has been consistently supportive of the need to deploy technologies that take a non-combustion approach to the destruction of POPs.
Slovakia has taken a leadership role in Central and Eastern Europe and continues to be an active advocate of the programme beyond its borders. Slovakia will host foreign officials and representatives of civil society who wish to travel to Slovakia to observe the process of POPs waste destruction.
More than half of the US$ 20 million budget is provided by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) and the rest by the private sector, the Slovak Government (the Government of Slovakia in partnership with Chemko Corporation have committed over US$ 8.9 million) and several civil society organizations, as well as UNIDO and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The GEF is the financial mechanism for POPs projects since the "adoption and opening for signature" of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), in 2001. Over 150 countries signed the Convention and it entered into force, on 17 May 2004, 90 days after the ratification by the fiftieth country. Slovakia has not only signed the Stockholm Convention but was one of the first countries to ratify.
The Stockholm Convention focuses on eliminating or reducing releases of 12 POPs, the so-called "Dirty Dozen". It sets up a system for tackling additional chemicals identified as unacceptably hazardous. It recognizes that a special effort may sometimes be needed phase out certain chemicals for certain uses and seeks to ensure that this effort is made. It also channels resources into cleaning up the existing stockpiles and dumps of POPs that litter the world's landscape. POPs are toxic organic compounds that resist degradation. They move long distances in the earth, oceans and atmosphere, deposit and remain in the environment for long periods. POPs have been developed and used in a wide range of products such as pesticides, insecticides, dielectric and hydraulic fluids, and are generated in various combustion processes. They affect not only plant and animal development and growth, but also human health. They can cause reduced reproductive success, birth defects, behavioral changes and death. They are suspected human carcinogens and disrupt the immune and endocrine systems.
The project will put in place a technology with the capacity to destroy 1000 tons per year of PCB and other POPs contaminated products, and plans to destroy some 6,300 tons over a period of seven years. At the end of the demonstration phase, data and information obtained would make it possible to project the destruction costs at any given time during the demonstration project. While the exact nature of the continued use of the technology cannot be fully determined at this time, it is clear that it will be productively deployed for many years beyond the demonstration project. Regarding the long-term financial sustainability of the project, evidence is emerging to reinforce earlier expectations. The inventory of POPs and other PTS (Persistent Toxic Substances) that is being compiled under the Slovakia Enabling Activity has already yielded a supply of POPs and other PTS in excess of what was believed to be the case before the inventory process began. It is expected that this stockpile will continue to grow. Further, there is a possibility that the first tranche of Accession Countries - Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and, of course, Slovakia - may form a common market at which time it may become possible to accommodate some of the POPs and other PTS from the other three Accession Countries.
Replicability will be assured through a number of the specific activities. These include developing a Central and Eastern European approach to the use of non-combustion technologies; the implementation of four workshops in different development regions stressing the advantages of a non-combusiton approach to POPs destruction, including the dissemination of project results; the preparation and distribution of Operational Manuals; the provision of technical advice and other programme and project related information to public and private sector entities; arranging visits of government officials and key elements of civil society to the Slovakian demonstration site to learn about and witness the demonstration activity; and disseminating programme and project related information and results through a dedicated programme and project web site.
Stakeholder participation has been a unique and successful feature during project preparation, and
will continue to be a major feature of the full project. The project will stress participation within
Slovakia, and will also sponsor regional and global workshops to disseminate project information and
results of the destruction activity in Slovakia.
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The desirability of exploring alternatives to combustion technologies for the destruction of
hazardous waste was first formally acknowledged at the intergovernmental level in February 1997 at
the second full Forum of the Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety (IFCS), in Canada. With
eighty-three governments and eleven intergovernmental organizations present and participating, a
report was adopted by consensus, which extended an invitation to "FAO together with UNEP and other
relevant IOMC Participating Organizations to evaluate farther technologies alternative to high
temperature incineration for the destruction, detoxification and containment of obsolete pesticides
and hazardous industrial chemicals" and invited UNIDO "to consider carrying out pilot projects".
There has been considerable controversy surrounding common destruction / remediation technologies used on POPs and similar wastes, including combustion technologies (such as dedicated incinerators, retrofitted cement kilns, industrial boilers and others) and land burial (utilizing various forms of containment technologies). The controversy over combustion technologies revolves around differing estimates of the actual destruction efficiency (not just destruction and removal efficiency) realized during actual operations and the concern that highly toxic residues (gaseous, liquid and/or solid) will be released to the environment during operations. There is also debate over the whether operating standards for waste combustion technologies that are in force in many OECD countries (requiring expensive pollution control technologies; sophisticated operations and management personnel; and an efficient and well-resourced regulatory establishment) can realistically be expected to be achieved in many countries with developing economies and economies in transition. The controversy about land burial technologies revolves around differing estimates of the integrity and longevity of the containments and the amount of volatilization and/or leaching of POPs and similar substances can be expected from the land burial site over the long term.
At present, most countries with developing economies and economies in transition lack adequate and appropriate technical capacity to properly destroy obsolete stocks of POPs and/or to remediate POPs- contaminated environmental reservoirs. In addition, in many countries, there are strong disagreements within civil society in the evaluation of technologies that have been proposed for use in the destruction of POPs stocks and/or in the remediation of POPs-contaminated environmental reservoirs. Because of these disagreements, in many cases, efforts to acquire the technical capacity to destroy obsolete stocks of PTS and/or to remediate PTS-contaminated environmental reservoirs have encountered strong resistance from influential sectors of civil society and this has often impeded or blocked progress.
Newer, highly effective technologies for the useful and appropriate environmentally sound destruction of many species of persistent toxic substances), especially POPs that do not utilize combustion processes, have recently emerged and been commercialised. Some of them have operating characteristics that make them far superior to incinerators. They appear to be capable of being operated in ways that avoid problems that have been associated with the expert and public opposition to incinerators and other combustion technologies. These technologies can directly destroy POPs that are present in obsolete chemical stockpiles and in contaminated wastes and can be combined with other cleanup technologies to destroy POPs trapped in soils and sediments. A consensus of opinion that is very positively inclined towards these newer, non- combustion POPs destruction technologies is emerging at the international level within a large body of Public Interest NGOs that have expertise in this field.
Programme and Project Objectives, Outputs and Activities and information and data about technology performance will be evaluated not less than annually by the GEF Programme and Project Coordination Unit. All elements of the Programme and Project will also be the subject of the various evaluation mechanisms of the Implementing Agency, UNDP, and the Executing Agency, UNIDO within the framework of the GEF Monitoring and Evaluation system. This will include the Project Performance and Evaluation Review (PPER), the Tri-Partite Review (TPR), and an external Evaluation and Final Report prior to the end of the first Project in Slovakia. Particular emphasis will be given to Civil Society participation in the technical and other aspects of Programme and Project monitoring and evaluation.
The mid-point Project Review (which would occur after the actual stockpile destruction has commenced) would focus on destruction performance and efficiency, and emphasize identification for dissemination of lessons learned from Programme and Project experience, including lessons on project design, implementation and overall management both at the Project and Programme levels. The final evaluation will focus on similar issues but will give strong emphasis to the potential for Project impact beyond the initial demonstration country. Recommendations for follow-on activities will be included in each of these review processes.
As important as the undertaking of effective and thorough Monitoring and Evaluation will be for the Programme and Project, the effective communication of the results of these activities is equally important. This will be accomplished my making certain that ongoing M&E results are included on the agendas of planned workshops and also posted on a regular basis on the Programme and project dedicated Web site
The Programme and Project will be establishing close working linkages with the World Bank implemented Africa Stockpiles Programme (ASP), the UNEP Medium Sized project for NGO Capacity Building in Stockholm Convention-related activities, and other Stockholm related activities. These working linkages will result in strong levels of collaboration between and among the UNDP, UNIDO, the World Bank, UNEP, FAO, WHO, UNIDO International Centre for Science and High Technology, and elements of Civil Society at local, national, regional and global levels through the Environmental Health Fund - International POPs Elimination Project IPEP.
Mohamed Eisa, M.Eisa@unido.org Tel +431 26026 4261
GEF Coordinator: Ned
Clarence-Smith, Tel +431 26026 5079 E.Clarence-Smith@unido.orgcoming
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your comments to the editor: K.Timmins@unido.org