International Ocean Institute Training Programme

UNEP(OCA)/LBA/IG.2/7
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(b) Encouraging international, regional and subregional funding sources and mechanisms to
ensure that available financial resources are made available for supporting measures to reduce or
eliminate releases of POPs to the environment;
(c) Inviting appropriate international agencies and bodies to strengthen necessary information
exchange, transfer of environmentally sound technology and capacity-building for the
implementation of the objectives, principles and measures laid down in this chapter for the
reduction and/or elimination of POPs releases to the environment;
(d) Strengthening and extending existing international quality assurance, standardization and
classification mechanisms for POPs to ensure that inventories and assessments are both reliable
and intercomparable. Such existing mechanisms include those co-sponsored by IOC, UNEP and
IAEA under the GIPME programme, and the associated activities of the Marine Environmental
Studies Laboratory in Monaco;
(e) Cooperation with countries in need of assistance, through financial, technical and scientific
support, in order to reduce and/or eliminate emissions and discharges of POPs that threaten to
accumulate to dangerous levels in the marine and coastal environment;
(f) Priority attention should be given to finding and introducing preferable substitutes for POPs
that pose unreasonable and otherwise unmanageable risks to human health and the environment.
C. Radioactive substances
1. Basis for action
107. Radioactive substances (i.e., materials containing radionuclides) have entered and/or are
entering the marine and coastal environment, directly or indirectly, as a result of a variety of
human activities and practices. These activities include production of energy, reprocessing of
spent fuel, military operations, nuclear testing, medical applications and other operations associated
with the management and disposal of radioactive wastes and the processing of natural materials by
industrial processes. Other activities, such as the transport of radioactive material, pose risks of
such releases.
108. Radioactive materials can present hazards to human health and to the environment.
Suspected radioactive contamination of foodstuffs can also have negative effects on marketing of
such foodstuffs.
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