First draft of plastics treaty to be done by year end: UN

PARIS - The first draft of a highly anticipated international treaty to combat plastic pollution should be finished by the end of November, 175 nations gathered in Paris decided on Monday after five days of gruelling talks.

The assembly’s negotiating committee called for the preparation of “a zero-draft text” of a “legally binding instrument” ahead of a third round of talks in Nairobi, Kenya, with the aim of finalising the treaty in 2024.

The decision emerged from an 11th-hour meeting led by France and Brazil and was adopted by the full plenary at Unesco’s Paris headquarters.

“Are there no more interventions on this point?“ asked chair of the forum’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee Gustavo Meza-Cuadra Velasquez.

“It is so decided,” he continued, as he brought down the gavel.

France’s Minister for Ecological Transition Christophe Bechu said the breakthrough came after a lot of “nitpicking” and “delaying tactics” by some countries.

Frustrations bubbled up during the first two days of the talks,

which were devoted entirely to a debate over procedural rules, as large plastics producer nations – including fossil fuel supplier Saudi Arabia, as well as China and India – resisted the idea the deal could be decided by a vote rather than by consensus.

Concern over plastics has surged as fragmented microplastics have been found on the world’s highest mountains, in the deepest oceans, in the stomachs of sea birds and in human blood and placentas.

Plastic also contributes to global warming, accounting for 3.4 per cent of global emissions in 2019, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

On current trends, annual production of fossil fuel-based plastics will nearly triple by 2060 to 1.2 billion tonnes, while waste will exceed 1 billion tonnes.

With less than 10 per cent recycled and more than a fifth dumped or burned illegally, environmental groups are pushing for the treaty to go beyond recycling or pollution and curb the scale of production.

Greenpeace East Asia global policy adviser Li Shuo said: “The world urgently needs an international plastic treaty, one that regulates production, one that addresses pollution from its very source.”

Dynamics between countries echo those in international climate negotiations, where “big producer countries are on the defence”, he told AFP, adding that producers want to focus on pollution and not cuts in how much plastic is made. AFP