Second session of the intergovernmental negotiating committee to prepare a global legally binding instrument on mercury (INC2)

At the second session of the committee, delegates agreed to base their discussion on the draft elements of a comprehensive approach to mercury that the secretariat had prepared. All sections of this document, based on the mandate provided by the UNEP Governing Council in its decision 25/5, were debated in plenary during the course of the meeting. Contact groups worked on three topics: storage, waste and contaminated sites; artisanal and small-scale gold mining; emissions to air and releases to water and land. Facilitators were mandated to gather views of delegates on a series of other issues. The meeting also agreed on the establishment of a legal group. 

The committee concluded by requesting the secretariat to prepare additional documents for consideration by the committee at its next session, including a new draft text of the comprehensive and suitable approach to mercury. This new text would be based on the draft elements paper prepared for the second session of the committee and would reflect views on the possible content of the mercury instrument as expressed by the parties at the second session and as submitted by parties to the secretariat in writing.