Governments unanimously decided to launch negotiations on an international mercury treaty to deal with world-wide emissions and discharges of a pollutant that threatens the health of millions, from fetuses and babies to small-scale gold miners and their families.

They also agreed that the risk to human health and the environment was so significant that accelerated action under a voluntary Global Mercury Partnership is needed whilst the treaty is being finalized.

The eight-point partnership plan include among others, boosting the world-wide capability for nations to safely store stockpiled mercury, reducing the supply of mercury from for example primary mining of the heavy metal and carrying out awareness raising of the risks alongside projects to cut the use of mercury in artisanal mining where an estimated 10 million miners and their families are exposed

In a news statement from the UN environment watchdog- UNEP, Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said: “UNEP has, for some seven years, coordinated and contributed to an intense scientific and policy debate on how best to deal with the issue of mercury. Today the world’s environment ministers, armed with the full facts and full choices, decided the time for talking was over—the time for action on this pollution is now.”

“Only a few weeks ago nations remained divided on how to deal with this major public health threat which touches everyone in every country of the world. Today we are united on the need for a legally binding instrument and immediate action towards a transition to a low-mercury world,” he said.

“I believe this will be a major, confidence-building boost for not only the chemicals and health agenda but right across the environmental challenges of our time from biodiversity loss to climate change,” said Steiner.

He said the mercury decision, alongside a range of other key agreements at the close of the UNEP Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum (GC/GMEF) , sent a clear message to citizens everywhere that the environment was moving back to the centre stage of political life and that a Green Economy is up and running.

Governments also signaled their determination to rise to the challenge of accelerating biodiversity loss and the degradation of ecosystems and their multi-trillion dollar services from carbon storage by forests to the coastal defense value of coral reefs.

Today they called on UNEP to hold an international meeting in 2009 to examine the pros and cons of establishing an “Intergovernmental science-policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services” alongside an assessment on the scientific gaps in current knowledge.

Governments also decided that a special group of developed and developing countries ministers ‘or high-level representatives’ be established to develop a set of options aimed at improving the way the world’s environmental architecture is run in order to streamline and boost the ability of the global community to tackle persistent and emerging

Mercury’s damage to the human nervous system has been known for over a century. Alice in Wonderland’s mad hatter echoed the fact that hatters worked with mercury to strengthen brims.