Countries fail to agree deal to "end the world's plastic pollution crisis"
Delegates from 175 countries spent last week in Busan, South Korea, attempting to negotiate a legally binding treaty to address global plastic pollution, but they failed to bridge significant gaps in opinion over how much to limit new production, and the summit wrapped up on Sunday with nothing more than an agreement to keep talking. The gathering was the fifth and intended final phase of multiyear talks of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC-5).
By the final hours of the negotiations over the weekend, 95 countries had come together and agreed to reject any treaty that failed to include a legally binding phase-out and eventual ban on some harmful products and chemicals. The last draft treaty under consideration on Sunday did include some bans, but some critics — and crucially, some delegations — felt the measures were insufficient, and there was no deal to be had.
The delegations agreed only that another session would be scheduled in 2025, tentatively being calling "INC-5.2," to finalize a deal.
The talks were stymied by a wide gap in opinions between delegations from small, often developing nations and the world's more advanced economies — along with some major global corporations and business lobbies whose presence was, in itself, controversial.
The nonprofit Center for International Environmental Law said Wednesday that fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists at INC-5 had collectively formed the single largest delegation. The 220 registered corporate lobbyists at the summit outnumber all the delegates representing European Union nations combined.
"Their strategy is designed to preserve the financial interests of countries and companies who are putting their fossil-fueled profits above human health, human rights and the future of the planet," said Delphine Levi Alvares, CIEL's global petrochemicals campaign manager.
What was the goal of INC-5?
The goal of the summit was to finalize a legally binding treaty to reduce the amount of plastic pollution that enters the environment and address the scourge of waste already clogging the world's waterways and landfills and contaminating everything from the food and water we consume to our arteries.
The INC-5 delegations were tasked with defining reduction targets, determining how to regulate hazardous waste and chemicals and outlining criteria to manage the entire life cycle of plastics, from production to disposal.
What's at stake?
There's little dispute that something must be done to tackle plastic pollution, but how to do it remains contentious.
"We are confronted with the alarming reality that plastic pollution is set to triple by 2060, with levels expected to rise 2.5 times from 2015 levels by 2040," the delegation from Canada, which was among those pushing hard for a binding treaty to cap plastic production and phase out some toxic substances entirely, said in a statement before the summit concluded. "Global restrictions, prohibitions and phase-outs on certain harmful plastic products and chemicals of concern in plastics are essential for protecting both human health and the environment."
The idea of a cap on plastic production was deeply unpopular at the summit among nations whose economies still lean heavily on the production of both plastics and fossil fuels, which are essential to making plastic, including China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States.
A ban on certain chemicals used in some plastics that are known to be toxic to the environment and dangerous to human health also proved contentious.
In a statement on Sunday, the American Chemistry Council, one of the biggest industry groups supporting plastic production in the U.S., said it was "crucial" that any treaty be "focused on addressing the primary cause of plastic pollution — mismanaged waste," rather than on limiting the production of new materials.
There is historical precedent for focused product bans, including the decades-old Montreal Protocol, which saw the production of ozone-depleting chemicals including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) barred universally.
Island nations and developing countries are — just as with climate change — among those most directly impacted by plastic pollution, but least responsible for producing the waste. Some of these countries say a plastic pollution treaty is vital to preserve their fragile ecosystems and public health.
Speaking on behalf of the Small Islands Developing States group at the talks, Penivao Moealofa, of the small Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, said it was "already a challenge to manage our own plastic waste, and it is an injustice to us to continue to manage others' plastic waste, especially when we contribute to less than 1.3% of the total global plastic waste."
If policies are not implemented to change things, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says "annual plastics production, use and waste generation are projected to increase by 70% in 2040 compared to 2020," when the world churned out roughly 480 million tons of new plastic products.
"After another week of hard-fought and frustrating negotiations in Busan, the meeting has closed with governments no closer to agreeing on a solution to the worsening plastic crisis," the World Wildlife Fund's head of global plastics policy, Eirik Lindebjerg, lamented in a statement on Sunday. He said that over the 1,000 days since INC-5's mission to hammer out a treaty was established, "more than 800 million tonnes (882 million tons) of plastic has been produced, over 30 million tonnes of which have leaked into our ocean, harming wildlife, poisoning ecosystems and destroying lives, to say nothing of the plastic that has been sent to landfill or burnt."
Where do different countries stand on plastic pollution?
A group of 68 countries or blocs, including Canada, the EU, Mexico and Australia, have come to be known as the High Ambition Coalition (HAC). They've backed the goal of stopping all new plastic pollution from entering the environment by 2040, and they believe countries that create the most plastic, including the U.S., should pay to transition the global economy away from the reliance on new plastics.
In a joint statement for INC-5, the HAC had highlighted the importance of creating binding global rules to ensure products are designed with circularity in mind. Circularity is the concept in sustainability of reusing and repurposing products, rather than using and then discarding them, to reduce the amount of waste.
The petrochemical industry has been broadly supportive of a treaty, but it firmly opposes production caps and favors other solutions, such as recycling. But as CBS News has previously reported, recycling many plastics is incredibly challenging, expensive, and has not been scaled up to anywhere near the level that would make it a viable solution to the problem.
Scientists have suggested that, given the pace at which new plastic products are being manufactured, recycling won't be sufficient to combat its impact, and reduced production should be the first priority.
In August, Reuters reported a shift in U.S. government policy to support a global treaty calling for a reduction in plastic production, but three months later, nonprofit news website Grist reported the Biden administration was backtracking on that support ahead of INC-5.
The U.S. State Department has called for an agreement that works "towards ending plastic pollution entering the environment by 2040," but the American policy leans largely on recycling and circularity as primary mechanisms to achieve the goal — solutions supported by the petroleum and chemical industries.
Another factor weighing on the minds of many delegates in Busan was the fact that the U.S. delegation was sent by the soon-to-depart Biden administration. There's concern that any commitments Washington does make could be abandoned by the incoming Trump team.
