After Plastic Pollution Talks Stall, Governments Must Still Pursue Ambitious Treaty

Plastic pollution is a serious worldwide threat, jeopardizing human health and livelihoods and causing severe – and often fatal – consequences for wildlife. Humankind can solve this problem: By taking actions across the life cycle of plastic – from production and use through recycling and disposal – governments, the private sector and civil society could nearly end plastic pollution by 2040. But to do so requires that global decision makers adopt ambitious, legally binding policies, and unfortunately, the effort to help accomplish that took a major step backwards this week.

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an international treaty on plastic pollution wrapped up its fifth session, known as INC-5, on 1 December without reaching agreement. This is particularly disappointing because INC-5 was supposed to be the committee’s final meeting, and one at which many experts hoped the committee would fulfill its mandate to produce a legally binding treaty. This in essence delays the world’s best chance to tackle plastic pollution to a further meeting, which hasn’t yet been scheduled.

One positive from the week-long INC-5 negotiations, which took place in Busan, Republic of Korea, was that countries made substantial progress on a draft text even as a small group of negotiators blocked development of a final agreement because they opposed binding provisions across the full life cycle of plastic.

In fact, INC-5 saw more than 100 countries come together to push for the inclusion of measures to reduce plastic production to sustainable levels, a lynchpin of an effective treaty. The science clearly shows that recycling alone will not solve the plastic pollution problem. Without action, plastic production is predicted to increase by 66% by 2040. And even with significant investment in waste management infrastructure, 54 million metric tons of plastic waste would still be mismanaged and over half of plastic would remain unrecycled.

As INC-5 concluded, 85 countries signed the “ Stand Up For Ambition” declaration, which calls for legally binding provisions in the treaty, including a global target to reduce plastic production to sustainable levels, obligations to phase out the most harmful plastic products and chemicals, and adequate financing for implementing the deal. A corresponding statement, read out by Rwanda during INC-5's closing plenary, received a standing ovation from a majority of those in the room.

It is now vital that governments build on this momentum to finalize an ambitious, legally binding treaty. In 2019, the estimated amount of plastic pollution ending up in the environment annually was equivalent to more than the weight of the Titanic every day. If nothing is done, that amount will nearly double by 2040. Every delay means more plastic polluting the environment – and people – and further postpones the benefits for humankind and the planet that the treaty could provide.

Sarah Baulch works on The Pew Charitable Trusts’ preventing ocean plastics project.