The UN agreed on Wednesday (2) to start negotiations for the first global agreement against plastic pollution, a historic initiative in the fight to preserve biodiversity.
The United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEU), the highest international body on the subject meeting in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, adopted a motion creating an “Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee” tasked with preparing a legally binding text by 2024.
“It’s a day to go down in the history books,” said the President of the Assembly, the Norwegian Minister for the Environment, at the opening of the last day of work.
“We are going to start the extremely important process of negotiating a strong treaty to ban plastic pollution,” he added, recalling the link between the climate and natural crises, “both so important (…) that we must not solve one at the expense of the other.” “.
The text must establish a very broad agenda and the negotiators will focus, for example, on the complete “life cycle” of plastic, that is, the impacts of its production, use, disposal and recycling.
Implicitly, there may be limiting measures, at a time when more and more countries around the world ban single-use plastic bags, as well as other single-use products.
The treaty also provides for the negotiation of global targets in numbers with measures that can be mandatory or voluntary, control mechanisms, the development of national action plans taking into account the specificities of different countries and an aid system for poor countries.
It concerns all forms of terrestrial or marine pollution, including microplastics.
Biggest advance
Negotiations should begin in the second half of this year and will be open to all UN member countries.
This “historic” decision represents the biggest environmental advance since the Paris agreement to combat global warming in 2015.
The inclusion of all their concerns in the negotiations makes NGOs cautiously optimistic, although they stress, like many observers and participants, that monitoring will be necessary.
The commitment expressed by large multinationals, including some that use a lot of plastic packaging, such as Coca-Cola or Unilever, in favor of a treaty that establishes common rules reinforces optimism, despite the fact that these companies have not come forward with precise measures.
The future text should give visibility to the rules on plastic packaging of large multinationals and avoid distortions in competition in an industry that moves billions of dollars, according to its promoters.
Of the approximately 460 million tons of plastics produced in 2019 worldwide, less than 10% is currently recycled and 22% was abandoned in makeshift landfills, burned in the open or dumped in the middle of nature, according to the latest OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) estimates.
“We are at a moment of historic change, where the ambitious decisions taken today can prevent plastic pollution from contributing to the collapse of our planet’s ecosystem,” said Marco Lambertini, director general of the NGO WWF.
Graham Forbes, responsible for the issue at Greenpeace United States, celebrated a “big step” that “recognises that the entire plastic life cycle … causes pollution”.
But this NGO promises not to ease the pressure “as long as a treaty is reached and signed”.
