The major plastics treaty ends with failure

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Diplomats from around the world have concluded nine days of talks in Geneva – plus a marathon night session which lasted the first hours of Friday – without agreement on a world plastic treaty.

During a fence plenary that started on Friday at 6:30 am – more than 3 p.m. after the start of his departure – almost all countries opposed a draft of the United Nations Treaty which was proposed by the president of the negotiation committee, the Ecuadorian diplomat Luis Vayas Valdivieso. Many delegates have declared that the text did not reflect their mandate under the resolution of the assembly of the United Nations environment to “put an end to plastic pollution” by attacking the “full life cycle” of plastics.

“We are really sad to say that we will not have a treaty to put an end to plastic pollution here in Geneva,” the president of Norway chief, Andreas Bjelland Erikse, told President. Valdivieso finished the meeting just after 9 am with the promise they would continue on a later date.

The decision puts an end to a controversial and a half week of discussions during the fifth session of “taken up” negotiations on a United Nations Plastics Treaty, which began in Geneva on August 4. The delegates had arrived in the city in the hope of finalizing a treaty by Thursday, after having already exceeded its original deadline to conclude the agreement by the end of 2024.

The signs of a logjam were obvious even in the first days of the talks, however, while the countries reached the same red lines to which they had held in the previous negotiations. A so-called “group sharing the same ideas” of oil producing countries has declared that it would not accept legally binding obligations and opposed a wide range of provisions which, according to other nations were essential, including controls on the production of new plastics, as well as compulsory disclosure and the abolition of dangerous chemicals used in plastics.

During a plenary on August 9, three observers told Grist independently that negotiations felt as a “marmot day”, as the countries were repeating familiar discussion points. A standard around decision -making based on consensus has discouraged the compromise of all countries, although the group sharing the same ideas – which includes Bahrain, Iran and Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Russia, among other countries – was particularly uncompromising and understood that it could simply block proposals rather than moving its positions. Instead of reducing a treaty project that had been prepared at the end of last year during the previous meeting in Busan, South Korea, the delegates added hundreds of suggestions, by putting an agreement further from the scope.

During the talks in Geneva, the delegates rejected two new drafts of the treaty prepared by Valdivieso: a published on Wednesday, which was so reprehensible that the countries declared that it was “repugnant” and lacked “all demonstrable value”; And the most recent published a few hours before Friday 6:30 am in plenary. Many have expressed their preference to return to the Busan project as a basis for future discussion.

Despite Friday’s result, the plastic treaty does not yet seem to be dead. Almost all countries have expressed their interest in continuous negotiations – the European Union Jessika Roswall delegate said that it would not accept “a stillborn treaty” – and that many used their microphone time during the enclosure plenary to remind others what is at stake.

“We cannot ignore the severity of the situation,” said a Madagascar negotiator. “Every day, our oceans, ecosystems and communities suffer from the consequences of our inability to make decisive and unified actions.” The delegate of Tuvalu, the electoral election of Pepetua, said that not adopting a treaty means that “millions of tonnes of plastic waste will continue to be thrown into our oceans, affecting our ecosystem, our food security, the means of subsistence and the culture.”

However, without a change in the format of negotiations – in particular around decision -making – it is not clear if additional discussions will be fruitful. The standard around “decision -making by consensus” means that the threat of a vote cannot be used to prevent obstinate countries from their red lines; Unless decision -making by a majority vote is introduced, this dynamic does not change. “This meeting has proven that the consensus is dead,” said Bjorn Beeler, executive director of the International Pollutants Elimination Network, a coalition of health and environmental organizations. “The problem is not going to disappear.”

Senimili Nakora, one of the delegates of the Fiji, said during the enclosure plenary that “consensus deserves to be sought if he moves us forward, not if he stalls the process.” Switzerland negotiator, Felix Wertli, said that “this process needs an expiration time” and that “another similar meeting cannot bring the breakthrough and the ambition that is necessary”.

Other countries have raised wider concerns concerning the “process” by which the negotiations had taken place. The meetings had been “non-transparent”, “opaque” and “ambiguates”, they said during the plenary, probably referring to unclear instructions they had received from the secretariat, the bureaucratic organization which organizes the negotiations.

Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program, told journalists on Friday that it was at least useful to hear the countries more clearly articulating their red lines. “Everyone must understand that this work will not stop, because plastic pollution will not stop.”

The plastic industry, which opposed the control of plastic production and the peak of dangerous chemical groups, said that it would continue to support a treaty that “maintains plastics in the economy and out of the environment”. Marco Mensink, secretary of the Council of the International Council of Chemical Associations, said in a press release: “Although a global agreement do not conclude to put an end to plastic pollution is a missed opportunity, we will continue to support efforts to achieve an agreement that works for all nations and can be implemented effectively.”

Environmental groups, scientists and front line organizations were disappointed to leave Geneva without ambitious treatments. They said it would have been worse, however, if the countries had decided to compromise on key provisions such as human health and a “transition” for those most likely to be assigned by the modifications to global recycling and waste management policies, including waste pies.

In these circumstances, they applauded the delegates for not accepting the final version of the president’s text. “I am so happy that a solid treaty was a priority at a weak treaty,” said Jo Banner, co-founder of the American organization The Descendants Project, who advocates preserving the health and culture of the descendants of blacks before in a band of Louisiana extended by petrochemical installations reduced in slavé

“It looks like our voices have been heard,” added Cheyenne Rendon, an official of the American Society of Nations of the United States, who recommended that the Treaty understands a specific language on the rights of Aboriginal peoples and the use of Aboriginal science.

On the other hand, the voices of the observers were literally not heard in the last moments of the final plenary in Geneva. After more than two hours of declarations of national delegations, Valdivieso presented the microphone to a parade of young participants, indigenous peoples, waste pickers and others who had been present throughout the week and a half of talks. But only one speaker – from Youth Plastic Action Network – was able to make a statement before the United States and Kuwait asked the president to cut them and conclude the meeting.

It is now up to the plastic treaty secretariat to set a date and an hour for another series of negotiations, which are not likely to occur before next year. In the meantime, all eyes will be on the meeting of the United Nations Assembly of the United Nations in December, where Andersen should publish a report on the progress of negotiations – or his absence – and which could present an opportunity to the countries sharing the same ideas of reducing the ambition of the Treaty’s mandate: the statement speaking what the Treaty tries to achieve. Certain environmental groups fear that Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia and others will try to change the mandate so that it no longer refers to the “full life cycle” of plastics, but simply to plastic pollution – thus transforming the treaty into a waste management agreement rather than that which addresses the whole of plastics of plastics for health and the environment, including the production of matter.

Banner said that she did not feel defeated; In fact, she is “more passionate than ever” to continue fighting for legally binding restrictions on the quantity of plastic that the world does.

“I plan to survive,” she added, and to do this, “we have to stop plastic production.”

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