“The world is one step closer to the unmissable opportunity of a global treaty to end plastic pollution.” [WWF]
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The UN conference on plastic pollution is coming to an end: What you need to know about the plastic treaty negotiations in Paris this week
Crucial Paris meeting to eliminate plastic pollution
There has been intense lobbying:
Good news: the world is discussing a treaty to stem plastic pollution. Bad news: fossil-fuel interests are trying to weaken it: Fossil-Fuel Interests Try to Weaken Global Plastics Treaty – Scientific American
Saudi Arabia and a group of emerging economies like China, India and Russia pushed to keep vetoes in plastic treaty talks: Row over veto powers holds up Paris plastic treaty talks
And now an agreement has finally been reached:
Green and other groups have given mixed reviews to the sometimes-rocky talks on eradicating plastic pollution, which ended Saturday in Paris with an agreement to write the first draft of a groundbreaking global treaty.
“It will happen, it must happen, because we all don’t want plastic pollution in our territories, or in the oceans or anywhere,” Jyoti Mathur-Filipp, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) on Plastic Pollution told VOA, calling last year’s agreement on the legislation “historic.”
But environmentalists and other activists offered a fractured reaction to the talks, criticizing alleged stalling tactics deployed by a handful of countries, including petroleum-rich Saudi Arabia and Russia, and intervention by industry members. “We have seen the negative consequences of continued plastic and fossil fuel industry presence and (the) influence on negotiations, including procedural delays and distractions, as well as discussion of false solutions,” said Jen Fela, of the U.S.-based Plastic Pollution Coalition.
Still, the global environmental group, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) cited “tangible progress” nonetheless. “After a week of negotiations, the world is one step closer to the unmissable opportunity of a global treaty to end plastic pollution,” said WWF special envoy Marco Lambertini.
Mixed Review on Plastic Pollution Ban Talks in Paris
The agreement is to meet up again in Nairobi later in the year – to create a final, binding treaty:
Delegates at the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for Plastics agreed Friday evening to produce an initial draft before their next meeting in Kenya in November, participants said. The committee is charged with developing the first international, legally binding treaty on plastic pollution, on land and at sea. UN delegates agree to produce draft treaty to end global plastic pollution | PBS NewsHour