French President Emmanuel Macron warned that global plastic pollution is an environmental "time bomb" as he encouraged negotiators from 169 nations to craft an international treaty for ending plastic waste.
The U.N. Environment Program's Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, which is developing the treaty, began meeting on Monday at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris for the second of five weeklong sessions.
The committee was formed after delegates from 175 nations to the U.N. Environment Assembly in Nairobi voted unanimously last year to devise a legally binding global treaty to cleanse the world of plastic pollution, including the waste increasingly plaguing marine landscapes.
"Today, there is not a single place on the planet that has escaped plastic pollution. And this pollution is accelerating," Macron said in a video message calling for a ban on single-use plastics, less reliance on fossil fuels, and no more plastic waste shipped from rich nations to poorer ones.
"If we do nothing, we will triple the amount of today's plastic by 2060," he said, referring to estimates that global plastic waste has more than doubled in 20 years to 460 million metric tons a year and is on track to triple within four decades.
"Plastic pollution is therefore a ticking time bomb as well as a plague that is already present. It is our duty to end it as quickly as possible."
Reuse, recycling and replacement
About 69% of all the plastics produced are used just once or twice before they are thrown away. About 22% is mismanaged, meaning it is dumped in landfills, leaks into the environment or illegally incinerated.
Just 9% is recycled, according to the Organization for Economic Development, which found last year that the world is producing twice as much plastic waste as it did two decades ago.
Earlier this month a report from Nairobi-based UNEP said a global treaty to cut plastic pollution could eliminate four-fifths of the world's plastic waste by 2040 mainly through far more reuse, recycling and replaced materials.
Doing so would pay off because the annual social and environmental costs of plastic pollution range from US$300 billion to $US1.5 trillion, according to the report, which projected a net growth of 970,000 jobs in developing countries and a net loss of 270,000 jobs in developed countries.
Norway and Rwanda chair a group of countries formed a "high-ambition" coalition pushing for a legally binding plastic pollution treaty. But since most plastic is made from fossil fuels, oil and gas producers and industry groups – backed by nations such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States – favor a more limited treaty.
Seeking 'areas of convergence'
Some 2,800 people were given credentials to attend the talks, but the UNESCO building only had capacity for 1,500 people. That meant some of the 1,700 participants at Paris – more than 700 delegates and 900 observers from NGOs – who came to make their voices heard were not given the opportunity.
Some observers at the meeting noted that despite claims the meeting would be plastic free, there were single-use cups, sandwich wraps and "cardboard" salad boxes seemingly everywhere.
Officials sounded an optimistic note at the end of the first day, saying it marked the first time negotiators began getting into the details of what the treaty should include.
"This is an important meeting. We have to discuss the substance. We have already heard general positions. Now we are entering into the nitty gritty of the details," said the chair of the negotiating committee, Gustavo Meza-Cuadra Velázquez, a former foreign minister and career diplomat for Peru.
"We need to identify areas of convergence, where more discussion, more research is required," he told a press briefing at the end of the first day. "We need to act fast because plastic is a growing problem for our environment and for our health."
Anticipating the complexities of the treaty, the Center for International Environmental Law, based in Washington and Geneva, produced a 136-page compilation of key terms that it says are relevant for the negotiations.
Plastic treaty advocates said opponents were monopolizing the floor using points of order to prevent discussion about the content of the treaty.
"What we have seen in the negotiations so far is a deliberate attempt to stymie and delay the work that is needed to advance the necessary work to develop a plastics treaty," Cate Bonacini, a senior communications specialist for CIEL, told a press briefing at the end of the first day.
She said the debate has remained far too focused on rules and procedures that could be used to undermine the negotiations.
Making Paris 'count'
Jyoti Mathur-Filipp, an environmental governance expert who heads the secretariat for the U.N.-led negotiating committee, described the latest session – including representatives from more than 600 organizations and a handful of oil and gas companies, some with delegations that included dozens of people– as "a meeting that adapts and moves at its own pace."
Two secret ballots were held to elect key negotiating members, she said, "which is a huge step forward." She largely dismissed environmental groups' concerns about the potential influence of industry lobbyists on the talks. "I would not say there are lots of fossil fuel companies inside this venue," she said.
"We must make Paris count," Mathur-Filipp added. "We have to go to the substance of the issues now and decide on what we want to move forward and what we want included in a legally binding agreement."
The first session was held late last year in Uruguay. The next session will be held in Nairobi in November, followed by two more next year. Officials hope the final text will be adopted at a diplomatic conference in mid-2025.
