By Benard Ogembo
In a few days, Member States will come together to participate in the fifth session of the
Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) that is tasked with advancing the plastics treaty.
Amidst this, the chunks of the draft locked between more than 3,000 brackets, which signal
disagreement over whether the enclosed words should be there at all, the negotiators will have
to “break free from brackets”, As one delegate put it at INC-4 in Ottawa earlier this year.
Policymakers are not holding back their feelings that, more than any other issue, the production
of plastic has divided INC participants. Some argue that no government will attack the profitable
hyper-consumption paradigm fueled by the pivot from petroleum as fuel to petroleum as a
source for raw materials for plastic product manufacturing (plastics is the solid form of
petroleum), and a lot of compromise will have to be made to come out with a treaty.
“The issue of production has become kind of a background battle in the treaty due to the fact
that overproduction and the continued expansion of plastic production is undermining everything
downstream. All we need to do is to turn off the tap,” says Christina Dixon, ocean campaign
leader, Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA).
Dickson pointed out at the reduction targets as another important aspect in terms of guiding an
ambition. However, negotiators will have to be keen to comprehensive measures related to
plastic production, mandatory reporting and transparency in plastic value chain.
She says, “Right now, there’s no plastic accountability for producers. The safety of that
information is in kind of a ‘black box’, but the treaty has this opportunity to open that box and
give us the window and understanding of what we’re dealing with in terms of the problems and
the measures to take.”
James Wakibia, an Environmental Activist, and a Photographer based in Kenya says that the
world coming together to establish a plastic treaty is a significant milestone. “As an activist
campaigning against plastic pollution, I’d call this a ‘great world awakening’ to protect nature
and people. Plastics are not designed for nature.
He is optimistic that the deal will be struck in Busan, however, the question that lingers is
whether it will be strong enough to address the urgency of the crisis.
Therefore, a true reckoning with the ambitious treaty might be an exercise in futility and the
delegates from 175 member countries will waste much valuable time in Busan working at the
background and mobilizing to create a more ambitious treaty.
For James, whether the treaty is robust and legally binding with some voluntary elements, or
weaker in its initial form, it will still represent a significant step forward.
“If we end up with less comprehensive treaty, we’ll have the opportunity to strengthen it over
time. Emerging evidence about the impacts of plastic pollution on the environment and human
health can help shape up ambitious measures to improve and adopt the treaty as needed,” he
added.
Often, countries that support production are themselves dealing with large amounts of plastic
pollution, due to limited waste management systems, and because they also receive
considerable waste imports from other countries.
Negotiators will also have to clearly define what countries will be required to do nationally. The
issue of National Action Plan (NAP) being voluntary is already deeply concerning. Also, the
legal obligations related to the global target will need to be reviewed so that the target could be
strengthened.
During INC-4 in Ottawa, Canada, Rwanda and Peru, who are also the original co-proponents of
the resolutions that led to the negotiations, recommended a global target of 40% by 2040. Dixon
says this is currently the most ambitious proposal on the table though not enough and will,
probably require a strong political good will to achieve.
Developing countries are the current dominant centres of production and the future centres of
consumption in the global economy. An increasing share of the global ‘consuming class’ now
lives in emerging and developing countries, with a vast concentration in India and China.
McKinsey estimates that by 2025 the global consuming class will have an additional 1.8 billion
people, of which 1 billion will live in the emerging world.
Waste remains a major environmental and public health challenge in many developing
countries. Of the top 20 countries ranked by mass of mismanaged plastic waste in 2015, 12
were low-income. Middle-class citizens in the developing world are already starting to consume
more pre-cooked and processed foodstuffs packed in plastic containers but reuse less.
The core obligation agreed upon by the ministers reaffirm Africa’s commitment to the
sustainable development goal number 12, and underscore the region’s need to support
measures for sustainable production and consumption of primary plastic polymers and
eliminating the specific problematic plastic polymers and chemical product application of
concern.
Griffins Ochieng, the Executive Director, Centre for Environmental Justice and Development
(CEJAD) said that one of the overriding decisions that the African Ministerial Conference on
Environment made in Dakar, Senegal after the preparatory meeting was to rally the Africa
Group of Negotiators to have a treaty that protect the region from the health, climate and
biodiversity threats by plastic pollution.
The region position itself to ensure that plastic production is reduced and also elimination of
some of the most harmful chemicals in order to protect it from being the net importing economy
and not a major producer of plastics and chemicals.
The so-called High Ambition Coalition argue that fossil fuels, petrochemicals and plastics
manufacturing are important to their economies. Petrochemicals, from which plastics are made,
are the primary driver of growth in oil demand.
In line with this, some countries and industries appear to be accelerating the build-out of
petrochemical plants. For countries with big fossil fuel industries, political commitments to cut
plastic production pose a major economic risk.
The European Union (EU) has been very vocal, and clearly part of the High Ambition Group of
countries that are trying to engage in this negotiation. And as David Azoulay, CIEL Senior
Attorney, Director of Environmental Health program, “One of the issues that have been ongoing
with EU throughout this process is that while they prophesy a lot of high ambition in their
messaging, they haven’t been very organized, consistent or strategic on defending the ambition
they prophesy, especially in the question of production.”
It is without doubt that the EU is an important and sophisticated player in this treaty negotiations
in that it is the number one market plastics and one of the regions with the most advanced
regulatory framework around plastic products and chemicals of concern.
EU has also been at the forefront of pushing for better product design, both with the length of
detoxify the plastic supply chain, but also for better reuse of existing plastic products. Not to
mention being one of the major donors of multilateralism in the world, and they key player in the
finance decision in the treaty.
The INC process has been riddled with questions about decision-making since the beginning.
Heading into INC-5, a small handful of countries still hold the view that voting should not be
used to decide on substantive matters and are blocking the final adoption of the INC Rules of
Procedure unless the possibility of a vote on substantive matter is deleted.
According to Azoulay, “As in every negotiation, the countries that are negotiating for the lowest
common denominator, that are basically playing defense and opposing the adoption of anything
ambitious have a much easier gameplay. This, as opposed to those that are pushing for
achievement of something ambitious.” Overall, there’s a strong pressure on compromising and
aligning on some of the lowest common denominators, he added.
A majority of civil society group says the absence of clear decision-making and the possibility of
resolving issues by voting favors the positions of the Members most reluctant to take necessary
actions to end plastic pollution.
The civil society group believes that the obstructionist Tactics in Decision-Making is designed to
provide an overview of the current landscape regarding decision-making in the INC and the
tactics countries are employing in those efforts.
Reaffirming members’ central role in the negotiations, Ecuador’s Ambassador Luis Vayas
Valdivieso, Chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) to develop an
international legally binding instrument (ILBI) on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment commits to fostering dialogue and compromise in the spirit that “nothing is agreed
upon until everything is agreed upon”.
The INC Chair stated he is optimistic that “with the necessary political will,” the shared goal of
an ILBI on plastic pollution by the end of 2024 can be reached in Busan.
Since 1950, global plastic production has increased over 200-fold to almost 460 million tonnes
annually. Much of this has been driven by the rise of single-use plastic, which accounts for half
of all production.
While production has rocketed, recycling has struggled to keep up; as of 2015, it had only dealt
with 9 percent of all plastic waste ever produced.
At this fifth session, delegates will shift gears in the negotiation process as the INC will consider
representing a nearly complete set of provisions and multiple options for each textual element.
The delegates will consider the compilation of draft text of the international legally binding
instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment (UNEP/PP/INC.5/4); the
Chair’s non-paper (third iteration), prepared under the authority of the Chair, with a view to
facilitating progress at the fifth session across all aspects of the negotiations; and the reports of
the Co-chairs on the work of the ad hoc intersessional open-ended expert groups.
The 2022 OECD Global Plastics Outlook: Policy Scenarios to 2060 report projects that the
amount of plastic waste produced globally is on track to almost triple by 2060, with around half
ending up in landfills and less than a fifth recycled.
The report adds that in the absence of ambitious, coordinated and global policy action, the
global Plastics Treaty, leakage of plastics into rivers and oceans would grow by one-third, from 6
million tonnes (Mt) in 2020 to more than 9 Mt in 2040, leading to further adverse consequences
for humanity and human health and the environment, ecosystems and climate.
Another recently published OECD report on Policy Scenarios for Eliminating Plastic Pollution by
2040 quantifies the main drivers of plastics production and use, waste and pollution and
provides projections of the plastics lifecycle, waste generation and treatment, as well as related
leakage to the environment.
It states that business as usual “is unsustainable” and that “stringent policies to curb production
and demand (limiting total plastics use to 508 Mt in 2040), combined with policies to enhance
recycling rates (quadrupling to 42%), can ensure that all growth in plastics use is met through
recycled plastics rather than through primary production”.
Another key aspect of the negotiations of the treaty will be how to pay or resource this economic
transition away from toxic and problematic linear plastic economy. The issue of financing will be
very important because for the smaller and developing countries, implementing multilateral
agreements can sometimes be challenging and most nations would want to avoid unfortunate or
unnecessary trade- offs between what the country is able to do domestically, and the idea of
having to implement the complete agreement.
Jacob Kean Hammerson, emphasize the need for a good finance mechanism as a good aspect
of creating the necessary resourcing and also the political buy in for everyone in the treaty.
This is akin to the fact that the issue of finance is always a difficult conversation in most
multilateral environmental agreements giving reference to the United Nations Convention on
Biological Diversity (CBD) Conference of the Parties (COP) 16 that was recently suspended due
to lack of agreement on the certain aspects of finance. recently, a big aspect of COP 29 under
discussion was the new collective quantified goals for climate finance.
“This is a big question in the current global plastic treaty, and it is an area that really needs
much focus in the 7 days negotiations in Busan. It cannot be pushed down the road and needs
to be decided because each country will have to assess the treaty as a package to whether or
not is something they can sign onto and implement,” he noted.
This final negotiation session is scheduled amidst three UN-COPs, on Biodiversity, Climate
Change and Desertification, and the discussion on the establishment of a future Science-Policy-
Panel on Chemicals, Waste and Pollution Prevention.
It therefore calls for a common approach, and a future Plastics Treaty must address
interlinkages and enhance synergies across all these processes to tackle the so called triple
planetary crisis, enhance circular economy solutions and ultimately ending plastic pollution.
