- Last week, the International Negotiating Committee of the United Nations Environment Programme wrapped up the fourth of five scheduled negotiating sessions to develop an international treaty to control plastic pollution.
- Environmentalists say the atmosphere in Ottawa was better and more cooperative, with more achieved than at the third meeting, which took place in November and bogged down in procedural disagreements. However, there was little forward progress in Ottawa on a proposal to significantly reduce plastic production.
- For the first time ever, the pollution of the world’s oceans by large amounts of “Ghost gear” came under discussion at a treaty summit. This plastic waste includes a variety of fishing equipment, including plastic traps, nets, lines, ropes and artificial bait left floating in the world’s seas which can harm marine life and degrade into microplastics.
- Two committees have been authorized to work during intersessional meetings on draft language for discussion and possible adoption at the next, and potentially final treaty session, scheduled for late November in Busan, South Korea. The goal is to achieve a plastic pollution treaty by 2025.
Hopes for a worldwide plastics treaty gained some momentum at the fourth of five scheduled summits to hash out an agreement. But while the week-long session of the UN International Negotiating Committee made some headway, it didn’t leave environmentalists feeling overly optimistic. INC-4, which took place the last week of April in Ottawa, Canada, was the latest step in a United Nations effort to develop international law to control plastic pollution.
Representatives of 170 nations converged on Ottawa, where they greatly shortened a lengthy draft text, and reached consensus on the need for intersessional work before the fifth and (according to plan) final summit to agree on a treaty. This hoped-for final summit is scheduled in late November/early December 2024 in Busan, South Korea. In 2022, the United Nations Environment Programme set a goal of finalizing the treaty by 2025, via five negotiating sessions.
Observers left Ottawa in a somewhat better mood than after the INC-3 session held last November in Nairobi, Kenya, where the talks stalled as delegates spent long hours debating procedure rather than policy, and where nations that produce and consume the most plastic and petroleum resisted progress.
However, a major sticking point in Ottawa arose over a first time ever proposal made by Peru and Rwanda to reduce the production of primary plastic polymers by 40% in 15 years, from a 2025 baseline. While 29 nations backed these ambitious production limits, the United States, United Kingdom and other developed nations did not. Further discussion on production and full life cycle rules were sidelined in Ottawa, with the emphasis put on making headway on other policy issues.
Delegates advanced, but did not finalize a revised draft text and authorized two committees for intersessional work to try to develop proposals for possible treaty adoption at INC-5 in Busan. The working groups will discuss methods to implement and finance a treaty and develop criteria for products and chemicals — but to the chagrin of many environmentalists, will not work on a way to replace chemicals of concern in manufacture.
“We saw progress…. but not as much progress as we’d hoped,” said KerriLynn Miller, manager for preventing ocean plastics at Pew Charitable Trusts. “We were disappointed to see the subject of reduction of plastic production was not one of the areas included as a mandate for intersessional work.… Unless we address production, you’ll not fully be able to end plastic pollution.”
Erin Simon, vice president and head of plastic waste and business for WWF put a positive spin on Ottawa: “I think the energy at INC-4 was different from INC-3. The countries came with good intentions — most of them, not all of them, as usual,” she said, noting that a minority of nations are still resisting binding international rules. Simon added that she was “also pleased to see we made progress around producer responsibility.”
The plastics and petrochemical industry shone a positive light on the Ottawa summit. “It gives people something to talk about in terms of a zero draft. We [expect) to see a good deal of compromise involved” in the final treaty document, said Betsy Bowers, executive director of EPS Industry Alliance, a North American trade association for the expanded polystyrene industry, which largely favors recycling/reuse strategies — a stance also supported by the U.S. — and a position which many environmentalists say is inadequate to stem the rising tide of pollution. The Ottawa meeting was attended by 480 observer organizations, including environmental NGOs and 196 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists.
“Industry to some extent has been portrayed as an unwelcome observer by a lot of the participants, particularly the NGOs,” Bowers said. “A lot of these folks don’t know enough about waste management.” She criticized environmentalists for wanting to eliminate hazardous chemicals without adequately considering level of exposure. “You can drown in water but water is a good thing. A lot of polystyrene is very safe.” The World Health Organization states that styrene (the primary building block of polystyrene) is “probably carcinogenic in humans,” while some activists see polystyrene as being among the most toxic plastics, and should be banned.
“I am hoping to get some independent scientists on board,” added Bowers. “So far that is something that has been lacking” at INC, where everyone brings a perspective, representing a country, industry or environmental safety.
Also on the plus side at the summit, fishing gear became a hot treaty topic. Plastic traps, nets, lines, ropes and artificial bait foul waters across the world, trapping marine life and degrading into microplastic. “Overall, there is now broad consensus that fishing gear should be part of the agreement,” said Felipe Victoria, senior manager for international plastics policy at the Ocean Conservancy. “One proposal on the table would create an international database of abandoned fishing gear that anyone can report to, or view. “It should be a no-fault system. The idea is not to prosecute or penalize or scare into submission fishermen or the fishing industry but more to encourage reporting,” he explained.
Some environmentalists who attended the Ottawa meeting said the scope of planned intersessional work doesn’t go far enough. “Compared with the [INC-3] disaster in Nairobi, we had a relatively constructive meeting,” said Graham Forbes, global plastic projects leader at Greenpeace USA. “We actually started getting into textual negotiations on upstream measures, which is a big deal and sort of a milestone.” But Forbes remains pessimistic on achieving a meaningful agreement by year’s end. “It is a very weak program of intersessional work. I think the chair lost a lot of trust and goodwill” at this session.
Forbes especially criticized the lack of a mandate to formally address plastic production in intersessional work. “We’ll have to find a way to do it informally,” he said, perhaps through meetings of ministers. However, importantly, all the most ambitious provisions found in the zero draft of the treaty are still in the newly updated draft, which means those points are still up for discussion in Busan.
Miller noted that one of the key achievements in Ottawa was that 33 countries (not including the United States) and 35 other “stakeholders” (generally environmental organizations) signed the Bridge to Busan declaration on primary plastic polymers by early May. It calls for not banning but reaching “sustainable levels of production of primary plastic polymers” as well as “transparency” in their manufacture. It somewhat vaguely calls for possible “production freezes at specified levels, production reductions against agreed baselines, or other agreed constraints to prevent the unsustainable production of primary plastic polymers.”
INC-4 came on the heels of new data underscoring the world’s urgent need for a plastic treaty. The week before the summit, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California issued a peer-reviewed report warning that the plastic “industry’s current growth trajectory is exponential and plastic production is expected to double or triple by 2050.” That much production would contribute mightily not only to plastic pollution, but to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.
Banner image: The plastic pollution art installation outside Ottawa’s Shaw Centre where the summit took place. Image courtesy of UNEP.
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