Earth Today | SIDS build case for support to tackle plastic pollution
Published:Thursday | May 9, 2024 | 12:08 AM
SMALL ISLAND Developing States (SIDS) have made public their desire to have special provisions of support form a part of the proposed legally binding instrument on plastic pollution.
“We encourage additional opportunities for members to engage on key areas of the future instrument with the goal of building convergence, developing common understanding, and ultimately, advancing the text before us,” reads the April 29 closing statement of Samoa, delivered on behalf of the 39 members states that form a part of the Alliance of Small Island Developing States (AOSIS).
The statement was delivered at the fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-4) on plastic pollution, which was hosted by the government of Canada in Ottawa from April 23 to 29.
“One of these key areas is our objective to ensure the agreement is supported by new, additional, adequate, and predictable means of implementation. This must include a robust financial mechanism, which advances just transition and provides specific support provisions for SIDS, including priority access to fast tracked resources, technology transfer, technical assistance and capacity-building,” added the AOSIS statement.
According to AOSIS, this accords with established precedent in existing multilateral environmental agreements.
“This agreement must fully take into account, both in its design and implementation, the special circumstances of SIDS and our unique vulnerabilities to this issue, like other environmental challenges that we are disproportionately affected by, but contribute minimally to,” the statement noted.
“Small islands in plastic oceans is a reality we simply refuse to accept. We call upon colleagues to utilise our time efficiently to reach convergence on key elements that would drive meaningful progress on the road to Busan,” it added.
Busan, in the Republic of Korea, is to be the site of INC-5. The INC was convened following a March 2022 resolution of the UN Environment Assembly to develop the global, legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment.
INC-5, set for November 25 to December 1, is anticipated to yield the final agreement – one based on a comprehensive approach to the addressing the full life cycle of plastics, from production through to disposal.
UNEP boss Inger Andersen has urged INC members to persist in their efforts to complete work on the instrument, while noting her gratitude for the efforts in Ottawa.
“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,” she said in a April 29 release from 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,” added Andersen.
Plastic pollution is a danger to human and environmental health. The 2023 UNEP report, Turning off the tap: How the world cab end plastic pollution and create a circular economy, has signaled the need to accelerate efforts to treat with plastic pollution, including advancing work on the legally binding instrument, given what is at stake for both people and the planet.
It also advances ending plastic pollution through a “systems-change scenario” that accounts for the results of plastic pollution as well as its causes.
“Such a systems change will enable countries to turn off the tap and end plastic pollution, while at the same time transitioning towards safer and more stable jobs for those currently working in the informal sector, and create business and job opportunities,” the report noted.
And to get there, it said, requires three shifts in the business-as-usual way of operating. They include to reorient and diversify; reuse; and recycle plastics.
Reorienting and diversifying, the report explained, is about achieving sustainable alternatives while making provisions for plastics that already exist, but which can neither be reused nor recycled.
Reuse is about transforming the market from a throwaway economy to a reuse society, while recycling takes accounting of accelerating the market for plastics recycling by ensuring recycling becomes a more stable and profitable venture.