BUSAN: As delegates from 175 countries gathered in Busan, South Korea, on Monday for the fifth round of talks aimed at securing an international treaty to curb plastic pollution, lingering divisions cast doubts on whether a final agreement is in sight.

South Korea is hosting the fifth and ostensibly final UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) meeting this week, after the previous round of talks in Ottawa in April ended without a path forward on capping plastic production.

Instead, talks will be focused on chemicals of concern besides other measures, after petrochemical-producing nations such as Saudi Arabia and China strongly opposed efforts to target plastic production over the protests of countries that bear the brunt of plastic pollution.

The divisions plaguing plastics treaty talks echo conflicts that have long stalled UN efforts to curb global warming, with the most recent climate summit, COP29, having just ended with an agreement that poorer nations assailed as inadequate.

“Without significant intervention the amount of plastic entering the environment annually by 2040 is expected to nearly double compared to 2022,” INC Chair Luis Vayas Valdivieso said at the opening session in Busan on Monday.

“It is about humanity rising to meet an existential challenge,” he said, noting that micro-plastics have been found in human organs.

The United States raised eyebrows in August when it said it would back plastic production caps in the treaty, putting it in alignment with the EU, Kenya, Peru and other countries in the High Ambition Coalition.

Donald Trump’s election, however, has raised questions about that position, as during his first presidency he shunned multilateral agreements and any commitments to slow or stop US oil and petrochemical production.

The US delegation did not answer questions on whether it would reverse its new position to support plastic production caps. But it “supports ensuring that the global instrument addresses plastic products, chemicals used in plastic products, and the supply of primary plastic polymers,” according to a spokesperson for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

UN Environment Programme executive director Inger Andersen said she was confident the talks would end with an agreement, pointing to the communique from the G20 nations at last week summit calling for a legally binding treaty by the yearend.

For a Pacific island country like Fiji, a global plastics treaty is crucial to protect its fragile ecosystem and public health, said Sivendra Michael, Fiji’s climate minister and chief climate and plastics negotiator.

Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2024