Campaigners say last-minute compromise plays into the hands of petrostates and industry influences
Sandra Laville
Environment correspondent
THE GUARDIAN
Tue 30 Apr 2024
Campaigners are blaming developed countries for capitulating at the last minute to pressure from fossil fuel and industry lobbyists, and slowing progress towards the first global treaty to cut plastic waste.
Delegates concluded talks in Ottawa, Canada, late on Monday, with no agreement on a proposal for global reductions in the $712bn (£610bn) plastic production industry by 2040 to address twin issues of plastic waste and huge carbon emissions.
They agreed to hold more discussions before the last summit on the treaty in Busan, South Korea, in November.
But two years on from a historic agreement in Nairobi to forge a global treaty to cut plastic waste, delegates said countries were just wasting time. A proposal from Peru and Rwanda to address for the first time the scale of plastic production in order cut waste was supported by 29 countries including Australia, Denmark, Nigeria, Portugal, the Netherlands and Nigeria, who signed a declaration, “the Bridge to Busan”, calling on all delegates to ensure plastic production was addressed.
The UK and US did not support the proposal to cut plastic production.
Juliet Kabera, the director general of the Rwanda environment management authority, said: “Rwanda’s vision for the treaty is to achieve sustainable production of plastics. We need a global target based on science to measure our collective actions.”
But as talks headed into the night on Monday, there was no agreement on putting plastic production at the centre of the treaty.
David Azoulay, the director of environmental health at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), said while a handful of countries had taken a stand to keep ambitious proposals alive, most countries accepted a compromise at the last minute that played into the hands of petrostates and industry influences.
“From the beginning of negotiations, we have known that we need to cut plastic production to adopt a treaty that lives up to the promise envisioned … two years ago,” he said. “In Ottawa, we saw many countries rightly assert that it is important for the treaty to address production of primary plastic polymers.
“But when the time came to go beyond issuing empty declarations and fight for work to support the development of an effective intersessional programme, we saw the same developed member states who claim to be leading the world towards a world free from plastic pollution, abandon all pretence as soon as the biggest polluters look sideways at them.”
The US was singled out for criticism for blocking talks on cutting plastic production.
“The United States needs to stop pretending to be a leader and own the failure it has created here,” said Carroll Muffett, the president of CIEL. “When the world’s biggest exporter of oil and gas, and one of the biggest architects of the plastic expansion, says that it will ignore plastic production at the expense of the health, rights and lives of its own people, the world listens.”
He said that despite signalling at the G7 summit this month that it would commit to reduce plastic production, in Ottawa the US failed to follow through on its promises.skip past newsletter promotion
The failure to pursue ambitious cuts to plastic production came after a record number of fossil fuel and petrochemical lobbyists attended the summit in Canada.
Graham Forbes, Greenpeace’s head of delegation to the global plastics treaty negotiations, said: “The world is burning and member states are wasting time and opportunity. We saw some progress, aided by the continued efforts of states such as Rwanda, Peru, and the signatories of the Bridge to Busan declaration in pushing to reduce plastic production.
“However, compromises were made on the outcome which disregarded plastic production cuts, further distancing us from reaching a treaty that science requires and justice demands.”
Rich Gower, a senior economist at the NGO Tearfund, said: “An ambitious and effective treaty is still possible, but negotiations are on a knife-edge: time is short and strong opposition remains from the petrochemicals industry and states connected with it, even as their products pile up on street corners and in watercourses around the world.”
Representatives of the petrochemical industry said they were committed to a global treaty to cut plastic waste. But they pushed back on reductions in plastic production, an industry worth $712bn in 2023.
Chris Jahn, the council secretary of the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA), speaking on behalf of the industry group Global Partners for Plastics Circularity, said: “Our industry is fully committed to a legally binding agreement all countries can join that ends plastic pollution without eliminating the massive societal benefits plastics provide for a healthier and more sustainable world. We will continue to support governments’ efforts by bringing forth science-based and constructive solutions that leverage the innovations and technical expertise of our industry.”
Countries consider pact to reduce plastic production by 40% in 15 years
Motion sets out worldwide target in alignment with Paris agreement to limit global heating to 1.5C
Sandra Laville
Campaigners are blaming developed countries for capitulating at the last minute to pressure from fossil fuel and industry lobbyists, and slowing progress towards the first global treaty to cut plastic waste.
Delegates concluded talks in Ottawa, Canada, late on Monday, with no agreement on a proposal for global reductions in the $712bn (£610bn) plastic production industry by 2040 to address twin issues of plastic waste and huge carbon emissions.
They agreed to hold more discussions before the last summit on the treaty in Busan, South Korea, in November.
But two years on from a historic agreement in Nairobi to forge a global treaty to cut plastic waste, delegates said countries were just wasting time. A proposal from Peru and Rwanda to address for the first time the scale of plastic production in order cut waste was supported by 29 countries including Australia, Denmark, Nigeria, Portugal, the Netherlands and Nigeria, who signed a declaration, “the Bridge to Busan”, calling on all delegates to ensure plastic production was addressed.
The UK and US did not support the proposal to cut plastic production.
Juliet Kabera, the director general of the Rwanda environment management authority, said: “Rwanda’s vision for the treaty is to achieve sustainable production of plastics. We need a global target based on science to measure our collective actions.”
But as talks headed into the night on Monday, there was no agreement on putting plastic production at the centre of the treaty.
David Azoulay, the director of environmental health at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), said while a handful of countries had taken a stand to keep ambitious proposals alive, most countries accepted a compromise at the last minute that played into the hands of petrostates and industry influences.
“From the beginning of negotiations, we have known that we need to cut plastic production to adopt a treaty that lives up to the promise envisioned … two years ago,” he said. “In Ottawa, we saw many countries rightly assert that it is important for the treaty to address production of primary plastic polymers.
“But when the time came to go beyond issuing empty declarations and fight for work to support the development of an effective intersessional programme, we saw the same developed member states who claim to be leading the world towards a world free from plastic pollution, abandon all pretence as soon as the biggest polluters look sideways at them.”
The US was singled out for criticism for blocking talks on cutting plastic production.
“The United States needs to stop pretending to be a leader and own the failure it has created here,” said Carroll Muffett, the president of CIEL. “When the world’s biggest exporter of oil and gas, and one of the biggest architects of the plastic expansion, says that it will ignore plastic production at the expense of the health, rights and lives of its own people, the world listens.”
He said that despite signalling at the G7 summit this month that it would commit to reduce plastic production, in Ottawa the US failed to follow through on its promises.skip past newsletter promotion
The failure to pursue ambitious cuts to plastic production came after a record number of fossil fuel and petrochemical lobbyists attended the summit in Canada.
Graham Forbes, Greenpeace’s head of delegation to the global plastics treaty negotiations, said: “The world is burning and member states are wasting time and opportunity. We saw some progress, aided by the continued efforts of states such as Rwanda, Peru, and the signatories of the Bridge to Busan declaration in pushing to reduce plastic production.
“However, compromises were made on the outcome which disregarded plastic production cuts, further distancing us from reaching a treaty that science requires and justice demands.”
Rich Gower, a senior economist at the NGO Tearfund, said: “An ambitious and effective treaty is still possible, but negotiations are on a knife-edge: time is short and strong opposition remains from the petrochemicals industry and states connected with it, even as their products pile up on street corners and in watercourses around the world.”
Representatives of the petrochemical industry said they were committed to a global treaty to cut plastic waste. But they pushed back on reductions in plastic production, an industry worth $712bn in 2023.
Chris Jahn, the council secretary of the International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA), speaking on behalf of the industry group Global Partners for Plastics Circularity, said: “Our industry is fully committed to a legally binding agreement all countries can join that ends plastic pollution without eliminating the massive societal benefits plastics provide for a healthier and more sustainable world. We will continue to support governments’ efforts by bringing forth science-based and constructive solutions that leverage the innovations and technical expertise of our industry.”
Countries consider pact to reduce plastic production by 40% in 15 years
Motion sets out worldwide target in alignment with Paris agreement to limit global heating to 1.5C
Sandra Laville
Environment correspondent
THE GUARDIAN
Mon 29 Apr 2024
Countries are for the first time considering restrictions on the global production of plastic – to reduce it by 40% in 15 years – in an attempt to protect human health and the environment.
As the world attempts to make a treaty to cut plastic waste at UN talks in Ottawa, Canada, two countries have put forward the first concrete proposal to limit production to reduce its harmful effects including the huge carbon emissions from producing it.
The motion submitted by Rwanda and Peru sets out a global reduction target, ambitiously termed a “north star”, to cut the production of primary plastic polymers across the world by 40% by 2040, from a 2025 baseline.
World must come together to tackle plastic pollution, says chair of UN talks
It says: “The effectiveness of both supply and demand-side measures will be assessed, in whole or in part, on their success in reducing the production of primary plastic polymers to sustainable levels.”
The proposal calls for the consideration of mandatory reporting by countries of statistical data on production, imports and exports of primary plastic polymers.
A global plastic reduction target would be similar to the legally binding Paris agreement to pursue efforts to limit global temperature increase to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, Rwanda and Peru said.
“The target should align with our objectives for a safe circular economy for plastics by closing the circularity gap between production and consumption,” the countries said.
“It should also align with our objective in the Paris agreement to limit warming to 1.5C. To this end, one such global reduction target could be a 40% reduction by 2040 against a 2025 baseline.”
Global plastic production soared from 2m tonnes in 1950 to 348m tonnes in 2017. The plastic production industry is expected to double in capacity by 2040.
About 11m tonnes of plastic leaches into the ocean each year, and by 2040 the scale of this marine plastic waste pollution is likely to triple.
Plastic production is a significant driver of climate breakdown, as most plastic is made from fossil fuels. A study by scientists at the US-based Lawrence Berkeley National Lab has estimated that by 2050 plastic production could account for 21-31% of the world’s carbon emission budget required to limit global heating to 1.5C.skip past newsletter promotion
A 2021 analysis by Beyond Plastics found that the US plastics industry will be a bigger contributor to the climate crisis than coal-fired power in the country by 2030.
Countries agreed at UN talks in 2022 in Nairobi, Kenya, that a treaty to cut plastic waste must address the full life cycle of plastic. They promised to forge an international legally binding agreement by 2024.
The Ottawa talks, which are due to finish on Monday, aim to get 175 countries to agree the draft text of the treaty.
Graham Forbes, the global plastic projects leader at Greenpeace USA, who was at the Ottawa talks, said: “This is not an ambitious enough target for Greenpeace but it is an important first step to an agreement to limit global plastic production. You cannot solve the pollution crisis unless you constrain, reduce and restrict plastic production.”
Countries are for the first time considering restrictions on the global production of plastic – to reduce it by 40% in 15 years – in an attempt to protect human health and the environment.
As the world attempts to make a treaty to cut plastic waste at UN talks in Ottawa, Canada, two countries have put forward the first concrete proposal to limit production to reduce its harmful effects including the huge carbon emissions from producing it.
The motion submitted by Rwanda and Peru sets out a global reduction target, ambitiously termed a “north star”, to cut the production of primary plastic polymers across the world by 40% by 2040, from a 2025 baseline.
World must come together to tackle plastic pollution, says chair of UN talks
It says: “The effectiveness of both supply and demand-side measures will be assessed, in whole or in part, on their success in reducing the production of primary plastic polymers to sustainable levels.”
The proposal calls for the consideration of mandatory reporting by countries of statistical data on production, imports and exports of primary plastic polymers.
A global plastic reduction target would be similar to the legally binding Paris agreement to pursue efforts to limit global temperature increase to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, Rwanda and Peru said.
“The target should align with our objectives for a safe circular economy for plastics by closing the circularity gap between production and consumption,” the countries said.
“It should also align with our objective in the Paris agreement to limit warming to 1.5C. To this end, one such global reduction target could be a 40% reduction by 2040 against a 2025 baseline.”
Global plastic production soared from 2m tonnes in 1950 to 348m tonnes in 2017. The plastic production industry is expected to double in capacity by 2040.
About 11m tonnes of plastic leaches into the ocean each year, and by 2040 the scale of this marine plastic waste pollution is likely to triple.
Plastic production is a significant driver of climate breakdown, as most plastic is made from fossil fuels. A study by scientists at the US-based Lawrence Berkeley National Lab has estimated that by 2050 plastic production could account for 21-31% of the world’s carbon emission budget required to limit global heating to 1.5C.skip past newsletter promotion
A 2021 analysis by Beyond Plastics found that the US plastics industry will be a bigger contributor to the climate crisis than coal-fired power in the country by 2030.
Countries agreed at UN talks in 2022 in Nairobi, Kenya, that a treaty to cut plastic waste must address the full life cycle of plastic. They promised to forge an international legally binding agreement by 2024.
The Ottawa talks, which are due to finish on Monday, aim to get 175 countries to agree the draft text of the treaty.
Graham Forbes, the global plastic projects leader at Greenpeace USA, who was at the Ottawa talks, said: “This is not an ambitious enough target for Greenpeace but it is an important first step to an agreement to limit global plastic production. You cannot solve the pollution crisis unless you constrain, reduce and restrict plastic production.”
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