About 200 nations couldn’t agree on a treaty to curb plastic pollution after two years of divisive negotiations, but said they made some progress and would reconvene the talks next year.
A weeklong United Nations-backed summit in Busan, South Korea, concluded early Monday without a legally binding deal to address plastic pollution across the material’s lifecycle, including supply — which doubled between 2000 and 2019 — use, and disposal.
However, there was growing support among the majority of countries on the most sensitive issues including production and consumption limits and phasing out harmful chemicals.
Progress was blocked by a small group of mostly oil-producing nations including Saudi Arabia and Russia that opposed new restrictions, arguing that curbs on output and chemicals fell outside of the group’s mandate.
“We are not here to settle for a treaty that lacks an ambition to make a tangible impact,” Juliet Kabera, director general for the Rwanda Environment Authority and a key negotiator in Busan, said during a briefing on Sunday. “The overwhelming majority of countries recognise the severity of the plastic pollution crisis and agree on the need for urgent action.”
The outcome is the latest round in the struggle to gain consensus on global action to tackle climate change. A compromise deal at the annual COP29 climate summit last month was criticised by some as having made insufficient progress in boosting funding available to developing economies, while a UN biodiversity conference early in November ended without agreeing on the creation of a new global nature fund.
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The talks, which began in 2022, were aimed at addressing growth in plastic waste, with production forecast to jump about 60% to 736 million tons a year by 2040, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Recent research has shown how toxic the materials are as they accumulate in marine and terrestrial ecosystems and in human bodies.
A majority of countries favored a legally binding treaty and pushed to regulate dangerous chemicals, limit production and consumption, and to phase out the use of single-use products like cutlery.
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Major companies had also urged negotiators to deliver an ambitious pact. About 275 businesses that use plastics, including L’Oreal, Starbucks and 3M, offered support for efforts to ultimately end the use of some products and chemicals.
Nations need to lower consumption of plastics, and focus on products that are single use and “become waste very quickly,” and “reduce our dependency from fossil resources”, said Carsten Wachholz of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and secretariat co-lead of the group of companies.
Tensions in previous rounds of discussions had centered on whether to agree to curbs on output and on certain chemicals, or to settle on a package of funding aimed at improving trash collection and recycling.
“We see firsthand the devastating impacts of trans-boundary plastic pollution on our marine ecosystems and communities,” Sivendra Michael, Fiji’s permanent secretary for the ministry of environment and climate change, said in a statement during the talks. “We cannot afford incremental solutions.”
Advocates of tougher action in Busan faced opposition from fossil fuel and chemical industry companies, which sent more than 200 lobbyists to the talks, outnumbering even the 140 representatives from host South Korea, according the Center for International Environmental Law.
Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran opposed provisions that could limit future oil growth and argued that plastic pollution should principally be dealt with by lifting funding for recycling.
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Globally, less than 10% of plastic waste is currently recycled, according to the UN.
Some oil and gas producers are counting on an increase in plastic production to help offset weaker long-term demand as renewables and electric vehicles erode consumption of fuels. Petrochemicals’ share of total oil demand could nearly double by 2050, according to BloombergNEF.
During the talks, communities affected by plastic pollution called for urgent action to mitigate impacts on public health. Microplastics have been found in human placentas, breast milk, brain tissue and blood.
“We are literally raising a generation that starts its life polluted before they take their first breath,” Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, Panama’s special representative for climate change, said during the talks.
Charts: Bloomberg
