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.

中文翻译：

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利用镜像贸易数据中的差异检测汞的非法跨国贸易

主要由《关于汞的水俣公约》领导的正在进行的逐步淘汰汞的国际运动引发了对包括走私在内的非法跨国贸易的担忧。本研究旨在检测社会淘汰汞运动下是否存在非法跨国汞贸易，重点关注每个国家贸易统计数据的差异。为了按年份和国家分析跨国汞贸易差异的趋势，对联合国商品贸易统计数据库提供的每个国家贸易统计的镜像进出口应用了一个组内相关系数（ICC）。基于年份的 ICC 分析发现，在最近的汞淘汰运动中，在国家间层面报告的汞镜像进出口差异的检测趋向于减少。通过以出口国和进口国为重点的 ICC 分析，验证了 ICC 分析作为检测非法跨国汞贸易的一种方法的有效性。我们检测相关国家非法贸易的分析通过提供一种数据驱动的方法来有效检测非法汞贸易，有助于水俣公约所要求的有效性评估和定制能力建设。