History
The Stockholm Convention Regional Centre in Czech Republic is hosted by the RECETOX, which is an independent research centre operating within the Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.
The RECETOX has grown from the infrastructure, human resources and decades of experience in research of persistent organic pollutants POPs present in the former Regional Centre of Excellence in Environmental Science. Experts working in the former centre were usually consulted when it came to effects of POPs contamination and from early 2000 they begun to establish a dense scientific network nationally and internationally and provided consultations, lectures and capacity building in relation to the management of persistent organic pollutants.
RECETOX started to serve as the National Centre for Persistent Organic Pollutants of the Czech Republic to support the implementation of the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants in the Czech Republic in 2003. Since then it broadened its already significant experience in the field of POPs, shared expertise through transfer of the scientific knowledge into the application, performed field and laboratory experiments and measurements to collect necessary information for the implementation of the Stockholm Convention as well as with organizing a wide range of conferences, workshops and training programs focused on the capacity building and transfer of knowledge. RECETOX coordinated the development of the National inventory of POPs and National Implementation Plan for the Stockholm Convention in the Czech Republic and continues to provide a scientific, legal and infrastructure support, laboratory capacity and expertise for implementation of the Convention.
Extensive network of the Central and Eastern European partners was established during the 5th Framework Project (5FP, research and development program of the European Union) on endorsement of the Regional Centres of Excellence in Environmental Science between 2003-2005. This network identified pressing needs in cooperating countries – urgent need to transfer technology and know-how on increasing laboratory capacity, improving or standardizing sampling techniques and measuring and monitoring of information needed for the implementation of the Stockholm Convention. A number of conferences, joint workshops, research and training activities had therefore been organized throughout the project. As a follow-up, RECETOX established permanent POPs monitoring network MONET.
Since 2005 the RECETOX’s monitoring, capacity building and training activities spread over the whole Central and Eastern Europe. Upon request of a number of our CEE partners to continue sharing available expertise in the POPs management and transferring science into practice including national legislation, the Czech Republic took steps to nominate RECETOX as the Stockholm Convention Regional Centre for Capacity Building and the Transfer of Technology on behalf of the region of Central and Eastern Europe.
Consequently, RECETOX has been serving as a nominated Stockholm Convention Centre since October 2007. Finally, it has been endorsed as the Regional Centre for Capacity Building and the Transfer of Technology by the fourth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Stockholm Convention (COP4) in 2009 for four years, repeated in 2013 and 2017. We have been repeatedly evaluated as one of the best Regional Centres in the world. Next evaluation will be in 2023. For more information check our workplans and activity reports here.