Turkey officially became party to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) on 12 January 2010. Within the context of the Convention, taking necessary measures for the reduction and elimination of current persistent organic pollutants stockpiles and emissions are among the obligations that should be fulfilled by Turkey.
In order to fulfil the requirements of the Convention, the POPs Legacy Elimination and POPs Release Reduction Project will be implemented by the MoEU with the large scale project support of the Global Environment Fund (GEF) and in cooperation with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and United Nations Industrial Development Organisation.
The objectives of the POPs Legacy Elimination and POPs Release Reduction Project are elimination of existing POPs stockpiles, establishment of long term capacity for the management of POPs in accordance with the implementations and standards in the future and integration of POPs activities into the chemicals management principles. The duration of the project that will start after the ending of the Grant for the Completion of the Project is 3 years and the contribution of the GEF to the project is 10,815,000 US$.
Within the scope of the Project following activities will be implemented;
-Elimination of the existing POPs stockpiles and wastes,
-Planning/capacity development for the environmentally friendly and effective management of the future PCB stockpiles,
-Reduction of the emission from unintentionally produced POPs,
-Establishment of management capacity for the POPs contaminated sites,
-Strengthening of the administrative/regulatory capacity for effective management of POPs and chemicals.
Before the POPs Legacy Elimination and POPs Release Reduction Project, a “Project Preparation Grant” was provided by GEF in order to detail the activities that shall be carried out in Turkey within the context of the project and to identify its scope. The Project Preparation Grant was completed and the GEF contribution amounts to 250,000 US$.
Within the context of Project Preparation Grant following activities will be implemented;
- Defining the framework for the disposal and effective management of the pesticides and PCB stockpiles.
- Detailed scoping of the national PCB management plan development process including the definition of the supporting infrastructure for the management of PCB.
- Definition of the framework for technical assistance on National Action Plan and BAT/BEP for unintentionally produced POPs.
- definition of the framework for the management of POPs contaminated sites, needs assessment for legal and institutional framework,
- Preparation of “POPs Legacy Elimination and POPs Release Reduction Project” document.
