The Convention on Biological Diversity addresses the conservation of biodiversity, the sustainable use of the components of biodiversity, and the need to share in the benefits arising from these resources in a fair and equitable way.

BRI’s Biodiversity Research Program helps spearhead research and collaboration with these and other international organizations, government agencies, research institutions, and conservation researchers to address these issues. Reducing mercury and carbon in the environment will help improve global health.

To inform policy efforts and advance public awareness, an international group of scientists collaborated on producing 18 peer-reviewed papers that describe the impacts of mercury on the environment and key biota—information vital for understanding how to mitigate biodiversity loss. These papers are collected in a Special Issue of Ecotoxicology entitled Assessing Global Environmental Mercury Exposure in Biota and Potential Impacts on Biodiversity.

This BRI publication, Mercury in the Global Environment: Impacts to Biodiversity? highlights the collaborative efforts and major findings of those studies.