Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Hiroshima University, 1-4-1 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8527, Japan.
National Institute for Environmental Studies, 16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba 305-8506, Japan.
Environ Sci Technol. 2022 Oct 4;56(19):13565-13572. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.2c04327. Epub 2022 Sep 23.
The ongoing international movement to phase out mercury, mainly led by the Minamata Convention on Mercury, raises concerns about illegal intercountry trade, including smuggling. This study aims to detect the existence of illegal intercountry mercury trade under the social mercury phase-out movement, focusing on discrepancies in each country's trade statistics. To analyze the trends by year and country for discrepancies in intercountry mercury trade, an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was applied to the mirrored exports and imports from trade statistics of each country provided by the UN Comtrade. The year-based ICC analysis identified a tendency to reduce the detection of discrepancies in the reported mirrored exports and imports for mercury at the intercountry level under the recent mercury phase-out movement. Through an ICC analysis focusing on exporting and importing countries, the validity of the ICC analysis was verified as a way to detect illegal intercountry trade of mercury. Our analyses detecting the illegal trade of related countries contribute to the effectiveness evaluation and custom capacity building required in the Minamata Convention by offering a data-driven method to enable the effective detection of illegal mercury trade.
在《关于汞的水俣公约》等国际运动的推动下，全球范围内正在逐步淘汰汞，这引发了人们对非法跨国贸易（包括走私）的担忧。本研究旨在检测在全球逐步淘汰汞的社会运动下是否存在非法跨国汞贸易，重点关注各国贸易统计数据之间的差异。为了分析各国汞贸易差异的年度和国家趋势，本研究应用组内相关系数（ICC）分析了由联合国贸易统计数据库提供的每个国家贸易统计中的镜像进出口数据。基于年度的 ICC 分析表明，在最近的汞淘汰运动下，跨国层面报告的汞镜像进出口差异的检测率呈下降趋势。通过对出口国和进口国进行 ICC 分析，验证了 ICC 分析作为检测汞非法跨国贸易的有效性。本研究通过提供一种基于数据的方法来有效检测非法汞贸易，为《水俣公约》的有效性评估和海关能力建设做出了贡献。
