The 2001 Stockholm Convention on POPs "will save lives and protect the natural environment, particularly in the poorest communities and countries by banning the production and use of some of the most toxic chemicals known to mankind," UNEP chief Klaus Toepfer said in a statement.

The statement said that donor agencies and national investments would in the next several years channel at least 500 million dollars into an initiative to be managed by a Global Environment Facility to protect future generations from toxic chemicals.

"For decades, these highly toxic chemicals have killed and sickened people and animals by causing cancer and damaging the nervous, reproductive and immune systems," the Nairobi-based agency said in the statement.

Governments will start action against POPs when they meet for the first meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention in Punta del Este in Uruguay early 2005, according to the statement.

TERRA.WIRE