NAIROBI: Nations grappling with the plastic “suffocating” nature and leaching into food and the human body began fresh negotiations on Monday towards a UN treaty to tackle the growing problem.
Some 175 countries agreed last year to conclude by 2024 a binding agreement to combat the plastic pollution littering oceans, mountain tops, and even blood and breast milk.
Negotiators have met twice already but the week-long talks in Kenya are the first to consider the concrete details of the treaty, and tensions have emerged over what it should contain.
At the opening of the high-stakes talks at the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) headquarters in Nairobi, nations were urged to find common ground for the sake of the planet.
“Nature is suffocating, gasping for breath. All ecosystems… are under threat from plastic pollution,” said Jyoti Mathur-Filipp, executive secretary of the treaty negotiating committee.
“We hold in our hands the power to correct this destructive course.” Ahead of the talks, 60 so-called “high ambition” nations called for binding rules to reduce the use and production of plastic, which is made from fossil fuels, a measure supported by many environment groups.
It is one of the many options proposed in a treaty draft published in September that is driving the deliberations in Nairobi.
More than 2,000 delegates are attending, including representatives from oil and gas companies, environment lobbies and civil society groups.
Divergent views
The gathering comes just before crucial climate talks in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates later this month that are set to be dominated by debates over the future of fossil fuels.
Countries with large petrochemical industries have generally preferred to focus on recycling and better waste management rather than the caps on new plastic or product bans demanded by some parties to the talks.
UNEP executive director Inger Andersen said nations agreed to develop a treaty that dealt with the entire life cycle of plastics — from production at their source, to their design and use, to final disposal.
“We cannot recycle our way out of this mess,” she said on the sidelines of the talks.
Environment groups attending in Nairobi accused a so-called “low ambition coalition” of largely oil-producing nations including Iran, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain of aligning to frustrate the talks.
“We have seen these countries move actively… to prevent these negotiations from beginning, to prevent them from moving to substance, and to slow down those discussions,” Carroll Muffett from the Center for International Environmental Law told reporters.
‘Existential threat’
The International Council of Chemical Associations, a global industry body, said the treaty “should be focused on ending plastic pollution, not plastic production”. “We support a legally binding agreement that accelerates circularity where new plastics are made from used plastics,” the council, which counts Dow and ExxonMobil among its members, said on Monday.
Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2023
