- Final negotiations on a global plastics treaty are set to take place later this year, and since plastics manufacturing is a major user of fossil fuels, almost two hundred petrochemical industry lobbyists attended the previous round of negotiations in Ottawa.
- U.S. rhetoric there appeared to follow industry talking points, focusing on waste management and recycling while sidestepping any measures that would actually reduce the production of plastics, a new op-ed states.
- “The world needs U.S. leadership on plastic production reduction and the Biden-Harris Administration looks set to provide it. But it is now time to match these words with actions,” the author argues.
- This post is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily Mongabay.
With a final round of negotiations on a global plastics treaty set to take place later this year in Busan, South Korea, an autopsy is premature, especially with the dynamics changing daily.
For a while, the international regime to combat plastic pollution was looking dead, and deadly, on arrival, looking to far underperform even the one we designed for the climate: every month, we have new announcements about the latest, hottest month on record and the world’s top scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5°C, causing famines, conflicts and mass migration driven by far more intense heatwaves, wildfires and storms. You would think the countries of the world would stop taking marching orders from the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry.
Think again.
At the fourth round of negotiations last April in Ottawa, Canada, almost two hundred fossil fuel and petrochemical industry lobbyists showed up. Major players like Exxon and the American Chemistry Council, who have been actively lobbying the Biden-Harris Administration to do nothing to limit their ability to produce gross amounts of plastic, were casting a watching eye.
It worked in Ottawa.
U.S. rhetoric around measures to address plastic pollution settled on parroting industry talking points, focusing on waste management and recycling while sidestepping any measures that would actually reduce the production of plastics itself, also referred to as primary plastic polymers.
That put the U.S. on the side of Russia and Saudi Arabia, and at odds with its European allies and other friendly nations from around the world, like the co-authors of the draft resolution that kickstarted these negotiations, Peru and Rwanda, and France who have long championed reductions in plastic production. Named after the venue for the final round of negotiations, those countries and others released a declaration entitled “Bridge to Busan: Declaration on Primary Plastic Polymers,” which calls for a “global objective regarding the sustainable production of primary plastic polymers,” one that matches our ambitions for a circular economy while aligning with the 1.5°C objective in the Paris Agreement.
The Bridge to Busan now has over 50 signatories. Conspicuously absent from that list is the US.
But things are beginning to change: the U.S., in a major policy shift, now supports a global target to reduce plastic production in the plastics treaty. In response, the petrochemical industry, through the American Chemistry Council, got all weird and released a Trump-like statement full of hyperbole and scare tactics. But this new Biden-Harris Administration is not like the old one – something clicked and we are not going back.
There is renewed optimism about Busan, but still much work to do, one of which is figuring out what the global target should be.
A recent report from the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), of which the U.S. is a member, and the Nordic Council of Ministers underscores that around a 40% reduction in plastic production by 2040, starting at current levels, would match efforts to reduce plastic consumption through a package of policies promoting a circular economy for plastics.
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, found that even a freeze on plastic production is inadequate to protect our climate system, underscoring the importance of reductions to stay within 1.5°C. Building on this, my organization, the Environmental Investigation Agency, highlighted that at least a 40% reduction by 2040 is needed on the pathway to at least a 75% reduction by 2050, in order to give ourselves a reasonable shot of limiting warming to 1.5°C.
Which takes us back to Ottawa.
During negotiations, Peru and Rwanda proposed a global reduction target for primary plastic polymers of 40% by 2040 – or 40×40 for short. This would treat plastic pollution on par with two other planetary crises, climate and biodiversity, both of which have their own respective global targets. The Paris Agreement aims to limit warming to 1.5°C while the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework aims for 30% by 2030, referring to the protection of 30% of the world’s land, freshwater and oceans by 2030.
Why should plastic pollution not have a similar global target?
That is a question that is now front and center in Busan, following on the heels of the recent U.S. announcement in support of a global target. The impact of securing a global target would be profound, providing a benchmark against which to measure ambition – a North Star to guide our collective action.
The world needs U.S. leadership on plastic production reduction and the Biden-Harris Administration looks set to provide it. But it is now time to match these words with actions, in particular by signing on to the Bridge to Busan and fighting like hell to ensure a global target — 40×40 — is in the final agreement.
Tim Grabiel is Senior Lawyer & Policy Advisor for the Environmental Investigation Agency.
Banner image: ‘The Art of Plastic: how plastic waste can be transformed to street art,’ by Frank van Dongen via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
See related coverage:
Experts decry ‘funny math’ of plastics industry’s ‘advanced recycling’ claims