UN aims to deliver draft plastics treaty by year’s end
(FILES) This photo taken on September 17, 2015 shows a Chinese labourer sorting out plastic bottles for recycling in Dong Xiao Kou village, on the outskirt of Beijing. China is the world’s biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, and a crucial player in the global gathering finishing on December 11 in Paris, where nations have been trying to thrash out a plan to limit dangerous global warming. The 195-nation UN climate rescue talks in the French capital have been billed as the last chance to avert worst-case-scenario climate change impacts: increasingly severe drought, floods and storms, as well as island-engulfing rising seas. AFP PHOTO / FRED DUFOUR. Negotiations on a global treaty to combat plastic pollution will resume on May 29, 2023, with nations under pressure to stem the tide of trash amid calls from campaigners to limit industry influence on the talks. Some 175 nations pledged last year to agree by 2024 a binding deal to end the pollution from largely fossil fuel-based plastics that is choking the environment and infiltrating the bodies of humans and animals. The May 29-June 2 talks in Paris are tasked with agreeing the first outline for actions that could form the basis of a draft negotiating text. (Photo by Fred DUFOUR / AFP)
PARIS—The world should see the first draft of a highly anticipated and much-needed international treaty to combat plastic pollution by the end of November, 175 nations gathered in Paris decided after five days of grueling talks.
By the session’s close on Friday, the countries agreed to prepare a “zero draft” text of what would become a legally binding treaty and to work between negotiation sessions on key questions, such as the scope and principles of the future treaty.
The start of the third round of talks will be held in Nairobi, Kenya, in November, with the aim of finalizing the treaty in 2024.
The decision emerged from an eleventh-hour meeting led by France and Brazil and was adopted by the full plenary at Unesco’s Paris headquarters.
The breakthrough came after considerable “nit-picking” and “delaying tactics” by some countries, said France’s minister for ecological transition, Christophe Béchu.
Frustrations, resistance
Frustrations bubbled up during the first two days of the talks, which were devoted entirely to a debate over procedural rules, as large plastics producer nations—including fossil fuel supplier Saudi Arabia, as well as China and India—resisted the idea the deal could be decided by a vote rather than by consensus.On current trends, “by 2050 there will be more plastic waste than fish in the oceans,” Mexican negotiator Camila Zepeda told Agence France-Presse (AFP). “We can’t get hung up on procedural rules.”
Concern over the impact of plastics on the environment and human well-being has surged in recent years along with a crescendo of research documenting its omnipresence and persistence.
In nature, microplastics have been found in ice near the North Pole and inside fish navigating the oceans’ deepest, darkest recesses.
The equivalent of a garbage truck’s worth of plastic refuse is dumped into the ocean every minute.
Plastic debris is estimated to kill more than a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals each year, according to the United Nations Environment Program.Filter-feeding blue whales consume up to 10 million pieces of microplastic every day. In humans, microscopic bits of plastic have been detected in blood, breast milk and placentas.Green groups participating in the talks as observers had mixed rections.
Eirik Lindebjerg, global plastics policy manager for World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), hailed what he called “tangible progress.”
Beyond recycling
“A large majority of the countries have expressed a need for binding specific obligations to end plastic pollution,” he told AFP.Others expressed concern about what is to come.
“It is clear from this week’s negotiations that oil-producing countries and the fossil fuel industry will do everything in their power to weaken the treaty and delay the process,” said Angelica Carballo Pago, global plastics media lead for Greenpeace USA. “There is still a huge amount of work ahead of us.”
Besides its impact on the environment, plastic also drives global warming, accounting for more than 3 percent of global emissions in 2019, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).On current trends, annual production of fossil-fuel-based plastics will nearly triple by 2060 to 1.2 billion tons, while waste will exceed 1 billion tons.With less than 10 percent recycled and more than a fifth dumped or burned illegally, environmental groups are pushing for the treaty to go beyond recycling.
“The world needs urgently an international plastic treaty, one that regulates production, one that addresses pollution from its very source,” said Li Shuo of Greenpeace.
Closing plenary
Dynamics between countries echoes those in international climate negotiations, where “big producer countries are on the defense,” he told AFP, adding that producers want to focus on pollution and not cuts in how much plastic is made.
“My appeal to you at the beginning of this session was that you make Paris count. You have done so by providing us collectively with a mandate for a zero draft and intersessional work,” said Jyoti Mathur-Filipp, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) on Plastic Pollution at the closing plenary.
The start of negotiations was bogged down by more than two days focused on the rules of procedure for the talks. Saudi Arabia, Russia and China led objections to the treaty decisions being adopted by a majority vote rather than a consensus. A consensus would give one or a few countries the ability to block adoption.
Marian Ledesma, a campaigner with Greenpeace Philippines, told Reuters that if the INC process enables adoption by consensus instead of majority voting, it “will block a lot of important provisions.”
“Voting allows for as many states as possible to be able to support the treaty and allow us to move forward,” she said.The issue has not yet been fully resolved and will come up at the next round of talks.
Time short, stakes high
On May 31, negotiators were able to move ahead on the substance of the talks, laying out their positions on whether plastic production should be capped, “problematic” plastics should be reduced and whether the treaty should set national targets or allow countries to set their own plans.
“We have no time to lose. Now we have less time to lose,” said the representative of Samoa on behalf of small island nations at the talks on Wednesday, adding that island states face the harms of poor waste management and overproduction of plastic.
An informal group of countries called the “High Ambition Coalition,” which includes EU countries as well as Japan, Chile and island nations, wants global targets to reduce plastic production and pollution as well as restrictions on certain hazardous chemicals.
Countries like the United States and Saudi Arabia have favored national plans rather than global targets to tackle the problem. —AFP, Reuters
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