Mercury Science-Policy
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The Minamata Convention on Mercury is a global treaty to protect human health and the environment from the adverse effects of mercury. The Convention has afforded an unprecedented opportunity to involve our team into science-policy discussions. Notably, Prof. Basu has delivered talks to country delegates and stakeholders during the Inter-Governmental Negotiating Conferences (INCs) and Conference of Parties (COPs), and his team is a member of the Convention’s Partnership Advisory Group (PAG). Prof. Basu was hired by the Minamata Secretariat to serve as an expert to design a global monitoring program to assess the effectiveness of the Convention (and thus address Article 21 – Effectiveness Evaluation), and has also delivered talks in the Minamata Online Sessions concerning human health and health risk communication.
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Prof. Basu has participated on the plenary panel at International Conference of Mercury as a Global Pollutant (ICMGP) meetings, including: 2015 in Korea, 2017 in Providence, and 2022 virtual (South Africa). The work of the panels helped distill science-policy linkages to the ~1,000 delegates per meeting through oral presentations and the publication of synthesis reports including:
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For the 2018 UN Global Mercury Assessment, Prof. Basu was the lead author of the Assessment's Human Health report (overseen via the World Health Organization), and also contributed to the Biota chapter.
Prof. Basu has also participated in several Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) reports (AMAP 2011, AMAP 2021) including serving as the lead for the 2021 Mercury report's human health chapter:
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Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health
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Prof. Basu served as a Commissioner for the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health that published a landmark paper in 2018 that generated worldwide buzz. The work calculated that pollution causes ~9 million premature deaths per year worldwide, but that it has been largely ignored by governments and funders. From this, several prominent interviews were given to the CBC (e.g., The Current, Vancouver noon hour call-in show) and NPR (the Takeaway). The work of the Commission took ~2 years and pulled in 47 authors from around the world including representatives from several governments, the World Bank, and the UN.
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