Earth Today | Countries progress document for global agreement on plastics pollution
Published:Thursday | December 19, 2024 | 12:06 AM
THERE IS now an agreed document that is to form the basis for ongoing negotiations for a legally binding treaty to help bring an end to the scourge of plastics pollution.
This follows on the recent meeting of more than 3,000 delegates, including representatives from more than 170 countries and observers from more than 44 organisations, for the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee in Busan, Republic of Korea.
According to the information out of the United Nations Environment Programme, the agreed ‘Chair’s Text’ will form “a starting point” for negotiations in the new year.
“The world’s commitment to ending plastic pollution is clear and undeniable. Here in Busan, talks have moved us closer to agreeing on a global legally binding treaty that will protect our health, our environment, and our future from the onslaught of plastic pollution,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, in a December 2 news release.
“This … meeting has made good progress towards securing the deal the world demands. Through the Busan talks, negotiators have reached a greater degree of convergence on the structure and elements of the treaty text, as well as a better understanding of country positions and shared challenges. But it is clear there is persisting divergence in critical areas and more time is needed for these areas to be addressed,” she added.
The Chair’s Text provides a number of options on which countries are to deliberate and agree on in the next round of negotiations.
They include that parties shall be guided by the polluter pays principle, the precautionary principle and principles of international law embodied in the charter of the United Nations, such as principles of equal rights and self-determination of peoples; as well as by the special circumstances of small island developing states and of least developed countries and the disproportionate impacts of plastic pollution on small island developing states.
These are together with the use of the best available science and the scientific information as well as the use of relevant traditional knowledge, as well as knowledge of indigenous peoples and local knowledge systems where available.
Plastic pollution threatens both human and the environmental health, with a reported 19 to 23 million tonnes of the plastic waste reportedly leaking into aquatic ecosystems and polluting rivers, seas and lakes each year.
The UNEP’s 2023 report, Turning off the tap: How the world can end plastic pollution and create a circular economy, has punctuated the need to significantly advance work on the legally binding instrument, given what is at stake for both people and the planet.
It also champions a particular approach to ending plastic pollution, proposing a “systems change scenario” that accounts for not only the results of plastic pollution, but also the 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.
As such, it has advanced three shifts in the usual way of operating, namely, 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, the report noted, is concerned with accelerating the market for reusable products in order “to transform the throwaway economy to a reuse society” while recycling is about with accelerating the market for plastics recycling by ensuring recycling becomes a more stable and profitable venture.