As international negotiations wound up in the early hours of this morning, the United Nations declared progress and expert observers blamed an army of aggressive industry lobbyists for “weak compromise” on an agreement to tackle plastics pollution, to one degree or another.
“For the first time in the process, negotiators discussed the text of what is supposed to become a global treaty,” The Associated Press reported at 3:25 AM. “Delegates and observers at the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC-4) called it a welcome sign that talk shifted from ideas to treaty language at this fourth of five scheduled meetings.”
“We came to Ottawa to advance the text and with the hope that [countries] would agree on the intersessional work required to make even greater progress ahead of INC-5,” UN Environment Programme Executive Director Inger Andersen said in a release. “We leave Ottawa having achieved both goals and a clear path to landing an ambitious deal.”
The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), one of the main civil society groups following the treaty talks, said the results fell far short of what’s needed.
“In Ottawa, we saw many countries rightly assert that it is important for the treaty to address production of primary plastic polymers,” CIEL Director of Environmental Health David Azoulay said in an overnight release. “But when the time came to go beyond issuing empty declarations and fight for work to support the development of an effective intersessional program, we saw the same developed Member States who claim to be leading the world towards a world free from plastic pollution, abandon all pretence as soon as the biggest polluters look sideways at them.”
Read more about the plastics treaty negotiations and where the process fell apart.