By Mike Foley
The United States, aligned with Russia and states in the Persian Gulf, is thwarting a push by Australia and other nations, including France, Rwanda, the Netherlands and Nigeria, to establish the first international treaty to curb plastic pollution.
The failure of a proposal to cut plastic pollution emerged at a United Nations meeting in Ottawa, Canada, on Wednesday (AEST). It called for a global commitment to reach a target to reduce primary plastic polymers – meaning plastics made from petrochemicals that have not been processed before.
Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek wants a global treaty to cut plastic pollution. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen/Joe Armao
The proposal would have required signatory countries to set a limit on global plastic production that would be deemed sustainable and a requirement for countries to transparently report their production.
The United Nations conference, which wrapped up on Tuesday night in Ottawa, was the penultimate scheduled meeting set aside to develop a plastics treaty. The proposal was dubbed the “bridge to Busan” because the South Korean city will host the final conference designated to negotiate the treaty. That meeting will take place in November.
More than 170 countries agreed to form a treaty on plastics in 2022 and have been negotiating the terms since.
At that time, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek announced Australia had joined the “high-ambition coalition” of 20 nations – including Britain, Canada, France, and Germany – which aimed for a legally binding global treaty to end plastic pollution by 2040.
At the current trajectory, plastic pollution will double by 2040 and the rate of plastics entering the world’s oceans is set to triple in that time. Within 30 years it will surpass the biomass of the world’s fish.
“Plastic pollution is a global problem and it’s going to require global solutions,” Plibersek said on Wednesday.
“Here at home, we’re feeling the impacts of unsustainable global plastic production. If we don’t take action, plastic pollution is set to triple by 2060.
“My vision is for us to achieve a plastic-free Pacific within our lifetime.”
At the current trajectory, plastic pollution in the oceans will outweigh the biomass of the world’s fish.Credit: Istock
In contrast to the high-ambition coalition, a group of nations formed the “global coalition for plastics sustainability”, dubbed the “low-ambition coalition”. It includes big plastics producers such as China, and petrochemical states, and pushes for the UN to focus on plastic recycling and country-by-country reduction targets.
Alongside the US, that coalition’s lack of support for the global treaty stalled progress in Ottawa.
Australia imports 90 per cent of its plastics, and activist groups welcomed Plibersek’s support for a global treaty to curb plastic production.
The same groups also blamed petroleum-producing countries for stalling moves to limit plastic pollution, and accused them of protecting their polluting industries.
Cip Hamilton, plastics campaign manager at the Australian Marine Conservation Society, said a global plastics treaty would be crucial to cutting plastic production and consumption worldwide, and praised Plibersek for her role in negotiations.
“It’s encouraging to see Australia really turn up on the world stage and work with other countries as part of the high-ambition coalition to reduce plastic pollution,” Hamilton said. “An ambitious treaty is absolutely vital for the health of our oceans.”
World Wide Fund for Nature oceans policy manager Kate Noble said “vested economic interests are playing out in these negotiations in a major way”.
“The UN values the global plastic trade at $US1 trillion, with rapid annual growth. So oil and petrochemical companies are fighting hard in this process to protect profits through growth in plastic production,” Noble said.
Hamilton and Noble said the pledge of Australian state and federal environment ministers to regulate plastic packaging as soon as this year was not enough, after concluding voluntary targets and design guidelines to reduce plastics were not working.
The Centre for International Environment Law accused the US delegation to Ottawa of hypocrisy.
“Even as the US signalled to the G7 that it would commit to reduce plastic production, it intentionally blocked efforts to do that in the global talks most relevant to the issue,” said the centre’s president, Carroll Muffett.
“It’s time to ask whether the US delegation to the plastics treaty simply missed the memo on protecting health and human rights from the plastic threat, or whether the Biden administration forgot to send it.”
The centre said 196 lobbyists for the fossil fuel and chemical industries had registered for the talks, and outnumbered the 180 representatives of the European Union delegations. The number of lobbyists was three times larger than the 58 independent scientists from the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastic Treaty.
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