Is it a bird? A plane? Nope, just falling plastic
Ahead of global treaty talks in Ottawa, Australian foundation says average of 210 kilograms of microplastics fall on city daily
When representatives from around the world convene in Ottawa for plastic treaty negotiations this week, they will be greeted with sunny skies, highs of up to 13 C, and more than 210 kilograms on average of microplastics, which fall on the city each day.
That number is courtesy of the plastic forecast, a headline-grabbing calculation worked out by the Minderoo Foundation — founded by Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest and his wife, Nicola — to cut through competing interests at the talks and drive home the importance of reducing plastic production and waste.
“Weather is something we all understand and talk about,” said Tony Worby, the foundation’s chief scientist. “Proving that plastic is so ubiquitous that it is even in our weather makes it easier for people to conceptualize the scale of the problem.
“Making people (and, therefore, elected leaders) care is half the battle.”
And that will be a challenge during this fourth round of treaty negotiations, with many countries still divided on what limits to put on plastic, and a deadline that runs out at the end of the year.
Canada is one of only 64 “high ambition” countries, so called for their shared commitment to reduce plastic production and eliminate waste by 2040 by way of a legally binding treaty.
The U.S. government, however, wants the measures to be voluntary, because it doesn’t have the power to ratify a treaty on behalf of U.S. states. Others, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran and China, want the treaty to focus solely on plastic waste, not production.
Negotiations have also been hampered, critics say, by the sheer number of lobbyists attending, which many blame for influencing government officials and contributing to a bloated and weakened treaty document that is less powerful than when it was first drafted.
At the last round of negotiations in Nairobi, Kenya, in November, 143 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists were registered, a 36 per cent increase from round two. And six member states had fossil fuel and chemical company lobbyists in their delegation, according to the Center for Environmental International Law.
While the original version of the treaty included options, such as choosing between ambitious legally binding mechanisms to limit plastic production or chemicals of concern versus voluntary measures, the latest draft includes even more options, text that the chair has included from countries with dissenting viewpoints.
“Even as a lawyer, I look at that thing and go cross-eyed because it’s so convoluted,” said Melissa Gorrie, a law reform manager for Ecojustice, a Canadian non-profit environmental law charity. “Most of the options that have been added in the bracketed language weakens what was in the original zero draft,” said Gorrie. “It weakens the obligations and it confuses and obfuscates the issue.”
Treaty negotiations began in Uruguay at the end of 2022. They followed a resolution that March by the UN Environment Assembly to develop an international legally binding treaty on plastic pollution. An intergovernmental negotiating committee was struck to create the first draft, often referred to as the “zero draft.”
Scientists say the world is at a crisis point, with microplastics found in all corners of the Earth, as well as the atmosphere and in the ocean, contributing to a warming climate. Microplastics have also been found in animal and human tissue.
Single-use plastics, some of which are banned in Canada, are often littered, washed into storm sewers, and then rivers, by the rain. The litter flows onwards into the ocean, where it creates an island of waste.
“Without new and effective control measures, plastic production is set to double in 20 years and plastic waste leaking into the ocean is projected to triple by 2040,” according to the High Ambition coalition’s website.
Despite the challenges, the Canadian government in a technical briefing on background last week said it is optimistic about the coming negotiations.
One official said that although the document has become padded with options, he believes the chair of the UN negotiations had deliberately included the viewpoints of less ambitious countries as a tactic.
“Our goal now is to really cut out all of that stuff,” said one official. “In the effort to be inclusive, the chair has included a lot of country positions and contributions that, frankly, will not make it to the finish line … our goal now is to be sure that we are bringing it back into the realm of the reasonable.
“But we certainly have a lot of work ahead of us now to be sure that we are bringing this back to a place where we’re negotiating just a very small set of core issues in a few months in Korea,” said the official, referring to the last round of negotiations later this year.
The intervening months between negotiations could be key.
Canadian officials said they asked to continue discussions outside of the formal negotiations after the third round of treaty negotiations in Nairobi so that they could identify areas where they could find consensus, but some countries balked.
“Something we’re very keen to do is ensure that at this negotiation we land an agreement that will have all countries agree to the fact that we will require intersessional work going into INC-5 and the Republic of Korea,” said one official. “That all sounds very process-y, but it’s that informal work that delegations can do collectively in between formal negotiating rounds to help unstick issues, whatever those issues may be.”