As INC-5 draws closer, WWF urges governments to “get serious” about a Global Plastics Treaty by mandating core measures globally, rejecting the removal or watering down of important steps, and optimizing the text’s impact amidst “dismal” efforts at other conferences.
In the NGO’s view, the 2024 United Nations Biodiversity Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16) and 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (COP29) bore witness to “lacklustre performances”.
Now it views INC-5 as a “critical opportunity” for governments to rectify “this year’s so far bleak mandate on the state of our environment” with a “strong and effective” global plastic pollution treaty.
The current treaty texts are “not fit for the purpose of ending plastic pollution”, WWF claims, but it believes that “there is still time for governments to agree on a strong treaty by focusing on the most urgent and impactful core measures.”
Among WWF’s requirements are global bans for the “most harmful” plastic products and chemicals. This would involve science-based criteria that crack down on the plastics most likely to end up in the environment, as well as chemicals used in plastic production that could cause carcinogenic, mutagenic, reprotoxic, endocrine, or other harm to living organisms.
These should be accompanied by lists, specific phaseout timelines, and targets, WWF says. Transparency and disclosure requirements should also be included.
Furthermore, the treaty should apparently implement binding product design and performance requirements and systems for a non-toxic circular economy. These should take the form of “clear and consistent” guidelines that level the playing field for all industry players, as well as provide regulatory certainty for businesses.
Single-use items should be “significantly” replaced with alternative, sustainability-minded solutions, and material efficiency should be optimized. Both measures are expected to unlock a phase-out of single-use plastics and a reduction in pollution rates.
WWF adds that the treaty should focus on establishing new systems to reduce, reuse, and safely recycle the remaining plastics. Measures should cover the full life cycle of plastics, including supply and demand for primary plastic production, in order to incentivize material retention and lessen demand for single-use plastics.
Products that are consumed in high volumes, more likely to create pollution and, in WWF’s eyes, cause harm due to their design – beverage bottles and food containers are raised as examples – should be treated as a “starting point”. Requirements and guidelines should first focus on the reusability and recyclability of “priority plastic products”, on recycled plastics, and on establishing reuse systems, extended producer responsibility schemes, and other systems considered “essential” to a circular economy.
Even after the treaty is adopted, WWF urges parties to develop “tailored and sector-specific criteria” for packaging and other “priority industries” that contribute to plastic pollution.
Financially speaking, it is argued that a “comprehensive financial package” must bring together public and private financial flows, utilizing all sources available, to align with the implementation and objectives of the treaty. As low-income countries face the steepest costs when it comes to plastic pollution, such a package is set to ensure that all countries can implement the treaty with “predictable, adequate, fair and accessible” financial support.
Additional financial resources must be mobilized and distributed, especially to help developing countries implement the treaty, while financial flows that contribute to plastic pollution should be stopped.
Non-financial resources like technology transfer, capacity building, sharing best practices, training programmes, and international cooperation should also be secured through the treaty, WWF asserts. This is set to maximize the impact of any financial support while bolstering all countries’ technical and technological capabilities.
Finally, the treaty must include mechanisms to strengthen control and implementation measures over time. Countries should be held to data collection requirements, transparent reporting mechanisms, and regular progress-tracking assessments to identify areas for improvement.
In order to make technical recommendations, experts should also be able to consult mechanisms based on sound scientific evidence and emerging technologies and knowledge.
Provisions should be included to specify how future decisions are made. For instance, where a consensus cannot be reached, parties could be allowed to vote on an alteration to the existing text. These will allow countries to “progressively expand and dial up their efforts over time”.
Since INC negotiations began, WWF believes that 20 million metric tonnes of plastics have entered the ocean. Fears are rising that, if the current trajectory continues, global plastic production could almost double, while plastic leakage into the ocean could triple.
Now WWF warns that, if its suggested measures are not globally mandated, the expected increases in plastic production by 2050 could constitute 21-30% of the world’s carbon emission budget required to limited global warming to 1.5°C, as per the Paris Agreement.
Moreover, it believes that world leaders will not fulfil their UNEA-5.2 resolution to develop a binding instrument and end plastic pollution unless they “get serious in streamlining processes and agreeing on making specific core measures globally mandatory”.
Governments are urged to avoid watering down or excluding core measures of the treaty, and to vote on disputes or “weak measures” yielded by “a treaty borne out of consensus”.
“To protect current and future generations from a world overwhelmed by plastic pollution and the unequal burden it places on the most vulnerable communities, we need binding global rules,” said Kirsten Schuijt, director general at WWF International. “Negotiators have the backing of not only scientific evidence, but also a majority of governments, citizens and businesses that a global treaty with legally binding obligations, and not voluntary guidelines, is the only way to end the global plastic pollution crisis.
“This is absolutely possible. Negotiators must prioritize the most urgent and essential measures so we can get to the heart of the issue - what a strong treaty should include - faster and more impactfully.”
“The majority of governments have been calling for the right measures, and at INC-5, they need to turn these words into action by cementing such measures in the treaty text unambiguously,” continued Eirik Lindebjerg, global plastics policy lead and head of delegation for WWF at INC-5. “There can be no room for alternative interpretations, borne out of certain governments’ economic self-interests, to take precedence over the health and safety of the world.
“Those that want a strong treaty must therefore push ahead with one, even if this means not all governments will ratify it, or be ready to take the decision to another forum. A treaty with binding measures supported by the majority of governments will be far more effective than a voluntary-based treaty supported by all governments.”
Prior to the beginning of negotiations, the INC-5 Chair Luis Vayas Valdivieso published a non-paper document as a basis for upcoming negotiations. In theory, it will streamline discussions and upfront the most essential measures to include in the treaty.
According to WWF, essential core measures are relegated to “placeholders” in the non-paper. The text’s language is also perceived as too weak to clearly express that global and legally binding bans are mandatory, which could risk a reversion back to the ‘business-as-usual’ scenario of voluntary national initiatives.
Additionally, the NGO previously announced that it would hold the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution – constituting several EU members, Japan, Australia, Rwanda, Kenya, and others – to its INC-5 Ministerial Statement. These countries have committed to implementing legally binding measures – including a reduction in plastic production and consumption, a phase-out for ‘problematic’ plastic products and chemicals, and the implementation of a global, non-toxic circular economy – and aim to end plastic pollution by 2040.
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