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Report of the Ninth (9th) SPREP Meeting of Regional Meteorological Service Directors (RMSD), Vava'u Tonga, 19-21 August, 2003

The Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) several years ago identified the mismanagement of hazardous chemicals in the Pacific Island Countries as a serious environmental concern, and hence the Persistent Organic Pollutants in Pacific Island Countries (POPs in PICs) project was developed as an AusAID funded initiative, to be carried out by SPREP. POPs are a group of twelve particularly hazardous chemicals that have been singled out by the recent Stockholm Convention for urgent action to eliminate them from the world. They include polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which are mainly found in transformers, and several pesticides that are very persistent and toxic to the environment.