Global monitoring plan for persistent organic pollutants (POPs) under the Stockholm Convention: Triggering, streamlining and catalyzing global POPs monitoring.

The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) aims to protect human health and the environment from POPs through a range of measures aimed at reducing and ultimately eliminating their releases into the environment and subsequent human exposure. Article 16 of the Convention sets the basis for a mechanism to assess the success of the activities undertaken worldwide to implement the Convention. One of major pillars for the evaluation of the effectiveness of the Convention is monitoring data obtained through the Global Monitoring Plan (GMP) for POPs. The implementation of the GMP over the last eleven years, since the entry into force of the Convention, shows how a global treaty such as the Stockholm Convention streamlined existing monitoring efforts and triggered harmonization and further development of a global monitoring network. In its initial stages, long term POPs monitoring programmes were available only in some parts of the globe. Over more than a decade of generation of harmonized, comparable monitoring data on 23 chemicals of global concern, a rich and extremely valuable dataset has been generated in the frame of the GMP. Long-term monitoring programmes have enlarged the scope of their activities to cover newly listed chemicals, and new programmes have emerged. Monitoring data are broadly shared through the GMP data warehouse, the Convention's clearing-house mechanism, and through other appropriate global tools. Through its global reach, the GMP contributes to the global chemicals and waste policy agenda, supports and triggers further research initiatives, and provides information to the general public at large.