Battle looms over renewed plastic treaty negotiations

NAIROBI

Representatives from 175 nations meet in Nairobi from Nov. 13 to negotiate for the first time what concrete measures should be included in a binding global treaty to end plastic pollution.

Nations agreed last year to finalize by 2024 a world-first U.N. treaty to address the scourge of plastics found everywhere from mountain tops to ocean depths, and within human blood and breast milk.

Negotiators have met twice already but Nairobi is the first opportunity to debate a draft treaty published in September that outlines the many pathways to tackling the plastic problem.

The material made from fossil fuels is pervasive in the modern world, sparking growing alarm in recent years.

The meeting to debate its future comes just before crucial climate talks in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates later this month, where discussions over fossil fuels and their planet-heating emissions are due to dominate the agenda.

While there is broad consensus a plastics treaty is needed, there are very different opinions about what should be in it.

"That's the big battle we will see now," said Eirik Lindebjerg from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), which will be among thousands of attendees at the high-stakes talks at the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) global headquarters in Nairobi.

A number of countries and environment groups want the treaty to ban single-use products and impose strict rules limiting how much new plastic can actually be made, among other so-called "high ambition" measures.

Industry bodies and major plastic-producing economies have been advocating for years for measures that focus on improving waste management and reusing and recycling their products, rather than addressing their origin.

The "zero draft" underpinning the weeklong talks puts all options on the table and negotiations are expected to get heated as competing positions finally go head-to-head.

The treaty could be a pact for nature or "a cozy accommodation with the plastic industry" depending what direction the negotiations take, Peter Thomson, the U.N. secretary-general's special envoy for the ocean, said last month.

Bottles and shopping bags choke waterways while tiny pieces of microplastics show up in food and throughout the bodies of animals and humans.

Plastic also contributes to global warming, accounting for 3.4 percent of global emissions in 2019, according to the OECD.

Despite growing awareness of the problem, the amount of new plastic being made is exploding: Annual production is on track to triple within four decades, though less than 10 percent is recycled.

Ahead of Nairobi, around 60 nations voiced collective alarm about this trend and called for "binding provisions in the treaty to restrain and reduce the consumption and production" of plastic.

Graham Forbes from Greenpeace USA said the treaty "will succeed or fail based on how it restricts upstream plastic production."