Due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the 10th Asia-Pacific Mercury Monitoring Network Annual Meeting was held online on the morning of 6 October 2021. It was co-chaired by Deputy Minister Hung-Teh Tsai of the Taiwan EPA and Director Mark Kasman of the US EPA. More than 60 government officials and scholars from 21 partner countries, including Japan and Australia, participated.

To protect human health and the environment from the anthropogenic emission of mercury and its compounds, the Minamata Convention on Mercury entered into force in 2017. Considering that atmospheric mercury monitoring is one of the essential tasks of the Minamata Convention, the Taiwan EPA, and the US EPA have jointly launched the Asia-Pacific Mercury Monitoring Network (APMMN) to respond to the Minamata Convention and assist partner countries in the Indo-Pacific region to build capacities related to atmospheric mercury monitoring.

This year’s annual meeting included a lecture by Mark Cohen, chief scientist of the US Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, on the application of the back-trajectory model to atmospheric mercury transport, an introduction by Professor Guy-Rong Sheu from the Center for Environmental Monitoring and Technology of National Central University to the current implementation of the APMMN tasks, an introduction by Professor David Gay of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program of the United States to the status of the Program, and reports on the status of atmospheric mercury monitoring by partner countries.

Deputy Minister Tsai thanked the officials and scholars from home and abroad who have been promoting atmospheric mercury monitoring for a long time in the face of resource shortage and quietly working on environmental monitoring. He hoped that a close partnership could be established through this meeting to jointly implement the Minamata Convention and create a sustainable future for future generations.

Excerpt from Major Environmental Policies, November 2021