Global plastic pollution talks make modest progress
Negotiations on a future global treaty to tackle soaring plastic pollution ran overtime into Tuesday amid tense debates over whether the world should seek to limit the amount of plastic being made.
As the week-long talks in the Canadian capital of Ottawa ended before dawn, countries agreed to continue their work in ad hoc meetings before the final summit starting on November 25 in Busan, South Korea.
That work will include searching for forms of funding to help developing countries implement the treaty. Countries also agreed to devise a process to identify plastic chemicals that are hazardous and plastic products that are wasteful, such as singleuse plastic containers.
But they failed to establish a formal process to review how much virgin plastic is produced or to determine how much might be considered unsustainable.
The hoped-for treaty to be agreed in Busan could be the most significant deal relating to climate-warming emissions and environmental protection since the 2015 Paris Agreement.
“This is a small step on a very long path,” said Sivendra Michael, lead negotiator for the Pacific island nation of Fiji. “We literally have seven months remaining to deliver on this promise.”
More than 50 countries supported a proposal by Rwanda and Peru for assessing what a sustainable level for plastic production might look like. Plastic production is on track to triple by 2050, but today’s levels already “are unsustainable and far exceed our recycling and waste management capacities,” said Rwanda’s chief negotiator Juliet Kabera. As some parties objected to limiting plastic production, a group of 28 countries issued a pledge to see through the treaty effort with production caps included.
The “science is clear: we must first address the unsustainable levels of plastic production if we want to end plastic pollution globally,” said Christophe Bechu, France’s minister for ecological transition.