Global Observation System for Persistent Organic Pollutants

Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) are toxic substances released into the atmosphere through anthropogenic activities and have adverse environmental and human health effects. Global monitoring of POPs is important to visualize and interpret to better understand human and environmental exposure.

The Global Observation System for Persistent Organic Pollutants (GOS4POPs) is intended to further develop a global observation system for POPs to support the implementation of the Stockholm Convention, the UN Economic Commission for Europe Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP), and the Environmental Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP) as well as other international programs, including the Global Monitoring Plan (GMP) of the Stockholm Convention on POPs. The GOS4POPs initiative aims to develop and provide new services for stakeholder engagement that align with the priorities and objectives of GEO.

Global Monitoring Plan Data Warehouse (GMP DWH)

• Serve as regional node for electronic data collection, storage, processing and presentation in regions with limited capacity;
• Support the development of regional monitoring reports and the global report in the frame of the GMP;
• Support the effectiveness evaluation of the Stockholm Convention by compiling and visualizing results of global POPs monitoring activities;
• Providing user-friendly access to the POPs monitoring data to all stakeholders and the broad public.

GOS4POPs fills the gap of in-situ data in GEO and the contributes to the Stockholm Convention on POPs, the UN Economic Commission for Europe Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution, Environmental Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP) and many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including: Goal 3 (Good Health and Well-Being) and Goal 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation).

GOS4POPs uses Earth observations, open data and operational service to end-users to support the visualization of POPs and monitor the global movement of these substances. GOS4POPs combats POPs by requiring the scientific community to increase data sharing from environmental monitoring and establish modelling tools to support policy makers, stakeholder engagement and capacity building worldwide.

GOS4POPs is primarily intended to support the implementation of the Stockholm Convention on POPs. Article 16 of the Convention requires that effectiveness of measures to eliminate or significantly reduce POPs releases into environment must be regularly evaluated. The Global Monitoring Plan (GMP) Data Warehouse (DWH) was established and aimed at collecting comparable, harmonized and reliable information on POP levels in core environmental matrices (air, human tissues (breast milk/blood), and water).

The Initiative is designed to work with data from a wide range of heterogeneous sources, including national monitoring programmes and large international monitoring networks to ensure the harmonization and visualization of comparable information at national, regional, continental and global levels.

The GMP4POPs initiative is aimed at:

• Increasing the availability and quality of Earth observation data and information needed to monitor and track these pollutants as well as anticipated environmental changes based on chemical production and use restrictions;
• Harmonizing metadata production, archiving and sharing among networks; and
• Advancing services that support the policy mandate and effectiveness evaluation of the Stockholm Convention on POPs worldwide.

To date, the GOS4POPs has demonstrated a decline in many chemicals, but warrants further action on industrial chemicals and alternatives.