International Commitments to Monitoring
Canada-US
Canada-US Agreement on Air Quality (1991) Annex 2 addresses:
- Coordination of existing networks;
- Additions to monitoring tasks of existing networks of those air pollutants that the Parties agree should be monitored for the purposes of this Agreement;
- Addition of stations or networks where no existing monitoring facility can perform a necessary function for purposes of this Agreement;
- The use of compatible data management procedures, formats, and methods; and
- The exchange of monitoring data.
The December 2000 Ozone Annex to the Agreement includes obligations to:
- Research and applications that contribute to tracking of human health and environmental responses to controls;
- Evaluation of transboundary transport, using methods such as, inter alia, monitoring and meteorological data analyses, and modelling; and
- Evaluation of adequacy of monitoring networks
The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (1987 Protocol), Annex 15 created IADN to:
- Determine atmospheric loadings; and
- Define temporal and spatial trends.
The Great Lakes Binational Toxics Strategy (1997) was created to work towards the Virtual Elimination of Persistent Toxic Substances in the Great Lakes and includes:
- Monitoring the atmospheric transport and deposition of persistent toxic substances
North America
North American Regional Action Plans (NARAP) are trilateral action plans with Mexico and the United States carried out under NAFTA’s Commission for Environmental Cooperation to develop and implement strategies to address persistent organic pollutants.
Global
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN-ECE) has played a central role in Long Range Transport of Air Pollutants for the past thirty years. Eight protocols covering combustion products and commercial substances are monitored under the auspices of the Monitoring and Evaluation of Long Range Transmission of Air Pollutants in Europe (EMEP) Working Group.
The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants is a global treaty to protect human health and the environment from persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Environment Canada:
- Monitors the discharge, emission and losses of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) to the atmosphere.
World Meteorological Organization is a United Nations specialized agency and the authoritative voice on the state and behaviour of the Earth’s atmosphere, its interaction with the oceans, the climate it produces and the resulting distribution of water resources. Some monitoring activities include:
- Operating a station in the Arctic to monitor global atmospheric chemicals
- Providing Canadian data from several monitoring stations to global data centres
- Operating the World Ozone and UV Data Centre
