A previous round of negotiations — tasked with hammering out a legally binding treaty — ended without agreement in Busan, South Korea last year. The talks were meant to end with the world’s first accord on cutting plastics pollution after nearly two years of discussions, but concluded without an agreement — except to extend talks.
The announcement on the UNEP website of the new talks comes in the wake of a last-ditch COP16 finance deal on biodiversity agreed in Rome last week by delegates from some 150 countries. UNEP said the new plastics talks will be held at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, from August 5 to 14, 2020.
The new session will be preceded by “regional consultations” on August 4.
Unresolved disagreements
Last year in Busan, delegates from nearly 200 nations debated for a week on how to stop millions of tonnes of plastic waste from entering the environment each year. However, the talks broke down following opposition from a bloc of mainly oil-producing countries (including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, among others), who have rejected any limitation on the global production of plastic polymers.
Despite the lack of final agreement, UNEP chief Inger Andersen argued that significant progress had been made in Busan. “A high degree of convergence has been reached in 29 out of 32 articles that are proposed to make up the treaty text,” she said in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos last year.
But since the Busan talks, the new US president, Donald Trump, has clearly announced that he wants a “return to plastic”, promising to boost the exploitation of hydrocarbons.
Opponents of any reduction in global plastic production insist that the UN treaty should only cover the recycling of plastic waste, the management (collection, sorting) of waste, and the design of products upstream so that they are more easily recyclable.
“A big political and diplomatic push is needed in the coming months,” added Andersen during her speech in Davos. “Unless countries and businesses start implementing solutions now the costs will spiral. Plastic leakage to the environment is predicted to grow 50 per cent by 2040. The cost of damages from plastic pollution are predicted to rise as high as a cumulative US$281 trillion between 2016 and 2040. And just as costs are growing, so are risks to businesses. Consumers, shareholders and markets are beginning to move,” she urged.
