Global plastics treaty: Ottawa meeting inches forward, but civil society demands more ambition

UN negotiations in Ottawa made modest progress towards an international treaty on plastic pollution. However, the omission of discussions on plastic production from the intersessional work disappointed civil society and ambitious states. India, along with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar, faced criticism for opposing restrictions on plastic production. Despite some countries advocating for ambitious proposals, the compromise agreed upon favored the interests of the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries. Civil society believes the draft text is insufficient for the final negotiations in Busan, South Korea, in November-December 2023.

The fourth round of United Nations negotiations for an international treaty to end plastic pollution in Ottawa, Canada, ended on Tuesday with modest progress, leaving ambitious states and much of the civil society disappointed.

With the decision ignoring a discussion on the central role of plastics production in fueling the climate, biodiversity and pollution crises, they said the Ottawa negotiation caved into the interests of the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry.

Countries decided to move forward with intersessional work -- expert meetings between the official sessions of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) -- on the financial mechanism, plastic products, chemicals of concern in plastic products, product design, reusability and recyclability. "We came to Ottawa to advance the text and with the hope that members would agree on the intersessional work required to make even greater progress ahead of INC-5. We leave Ottawa having achieved both goals and a clear path to landing an ambitious deal in Busan ahead of us," said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). "The work, however, is far from over. The plastic pollution crisis continues to engulf the world and we have just a few months left before the end-of-year deadline, agreed upon in 2022. I urge members to show continued commitment and flexibility to achieve maximum ambition," she said.

Much of the civil society believes the draft text is unfit for the fifth and final negotiations in Busan, South Korea, from November 25 to December 1.

The talks wrapped up with a hugely disappointing decision to exclude discussions on the production of primary plastic polymers – a key root source of plastic pollution, the international NGO Environmental Investigation Agency said.

Member States agreed to include observers' participation during this work. They also decided to create a legal drafting group that will conduct a legal review of the text and provide recommendations to the plenary.

However, the EIA said, the decision to exclude upstream measures from the intersessional work means it will be more daunting to include extraction or production reduction measures under the ambit of the draft plastics treaty.

''This compromise diminishes the ambition of this process as it ignores the central role of plastics production in fueling the climate, biodiversity and pollution crises. This is not only an utter disappointment, but also a missed opportunity to tackle the root causes comprehensively,'' it said.

The fourth session of the INC to advance a plastics treaty saw countries adopt a ''weak program of formal intersessional work''. Despite a handful of countries taking a stand to keep ambitious proposals alive, most countries accepted a ''compromise that played into the hands of petrostates and industry influences'', a statement from the Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL) said.

A CIEL analysis released during INC-4 found that nearly 200 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists registered for the negotiations, including at least sixteen on country delegations. ''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 at UNEA two years ago. In Ottawa, we saw many countries rightly assert that it is important for the treaty to address the production of primary plastic polymers," says David Azoulay, Director of Environmental Health at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).

"But when the time came to go beyond issuing empty declarations and fight for work to support the development of an effective intersessional program, 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," he said.

The EIA said that seven-day negotiations revealed which countries are the champions for an ambitious plastics treaty that addresses the full lifecycle of plastics from extraction to disposal and which are the spoilers bending to the interests of the plastics and fossil fuel industries.

Perú and Rwanda stood out as champions for presenting a proposal for intersessional work on primary plastic polymers with aims to reduce 40 per cent of the global use of primary plastics polymers by 2040 from 2025 levels, which several delegations strongly supported, including Malawi, the Philippines and Fiji.

In addition to the Rwanda and Perú proposal, several countries launched the Bridge to Busan Declaration on Plastic Polymers to rally parties in support of keeping the provision for addressing primary plastic polymers alive in the treaty text and building momentum for the fifth and final round of negotiations in Busan, Republic of Korea later this year.

The 'spoilers', it said, are a ''small group of polymer-and-plastics-producing countries, including Saudi Arabia, India, Kuwait and Qatar, which tried to reopen and sow doubts over the scope of the draft treaty to redefine what the full lifecycle of plastic means'' in an apparent bid to restrict the coverage of the proposed treaty to waste management matters only.

According to the Centre for Science and Environment experts who tracked the negotiations in Ottawa, India opposed any limitations on primary plastic polymers or virgin plastics, arguing that production reductions exceed the scope of UNEA resolution 5/14.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)