An agreement as necessary as difficult to achieve. The second round of negotiations for the world treaty against plastic pollution ended this Friday with a minimum agreement. Delegates from 175 countries have met this week in Paris to prepare an international convention to curb plastic pollution. After five days of slow and tortuous discussions, they have finally agreed to draft a draft agreement which they hope to settle by the end of 2024.
“The Intergovernmental Negotiations Committee (CIN) asks its president to prepare (…) a draft of the first version of an international treaty legally binding& rdquor ;, this UN body has announced from the UNESCO headquarters in the French capital, where the negotiations were held. This has been the second summit of a process initiated by the United Nations in March 2022. In addition to this one in Paris, there are planned three more rounds of negotiations before the end of next year. The draft of the agreement must be ready before the next summit, which will take place in November in Nairobi (Kenya).
Limit production or focus on recycling?
The objective of the UN is the signing by the end of 2024 of a legally binding international treaty against plastic pollution. This not only represents a scourge for the environment, but also a key factor in global warming. Although world production of plastics has doubled in the last two decades, it barely 9% of their waste is recycled. Since the 1970s, up to 8,000 tons of plastic waste have accumulated in nature, especially in seas and oceans.
Plastics represent the 85% of marine debris, according to the UN, its impact being especially notorious in poor countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Up to 1.4 million birds and 14,000 marine mammals die each year from ingesting this waste. And the CO2 emissions produced by this sector are the ones that have grown the most in recent decades.
Faced with this growing problem, the European Union and developing countries such as Peru and Rwanda defend an ambitious and binding agreement on the reduction in plastic production and the prohibition of those most harmful materials. By contrast, the United States, China, Russia, India and the major oil producers are far more reticent. They would like the treaty will only address recycling and did not impose obligations.
“A time bomb & rdquor;
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“We don’t have time to waste& rdquor; to face “this time bomb & rdquor ;, warned the French president, Emmanuel Macron, at the beginning of this summit. Despite this, the negotiations have been slow and full of obstacles. Only procedural issues have been discussed in the first two days. “We have experienced a complicated week with many delaying maneuvers on procedural issues that meant that we did not discuss serious issues until late,” acknowledged the French Minister of Ecological Transition, Christophe Béchu.
Presented as a “key stage”, these negotiations in Paris have bordered on failure. In the end, they have been saved with an agreement in extremis. This basically consists of hitting the ball forward. In other words, buy time and hope that it will be a legally binding treaty. And leave for later the thorniest issues, such as the creation (or not) of an economic fund to help developing countries, the main victims of this contamination. “Time is running out and it is clear from this week of negotiations that the countries that produce fossil fuels and the oil industry will do everything possible to weaken this treaty and postpone this process & rdquor ;, Greenpeace warns it’s a statement.