Coming on the heels of lackluster performances at two major global environmental summits on nature and climate, INC-5 – the fifth and final round of negotiations for a treaty aimed at ending plastic pollution – is a critical opportunity for governments to inspire hope for the future and turn around this year’s so far bleak mandate on the state of the environment by establishing a strong and effective global plastic pollution treaty.
WWF warns that unless governments get serious about streamlining processes and agreeing on making specific core measures globally mandatory, world leaders will not be able to deliver on their promise two years ago to create a binding instrument that can end plastic pollution.
“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. 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 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,” said Kirsten Schuijt, Director General, WWF International.
In particular, WWF urges governments to include in the treaty explicit text to ban and phase out the most harmful plastic products and chemicals of concern; mandatory product design requirements to ensure remaining products are safe and easy to reuse and recycle; identify the level of funding that governments need to commit and how such resources will be disbursed; and mechanisms for strengthening the treaty over time.
If such measures are not mandated globally, projected increases in plastic production by 2050 could account for 21-30% of the world’s carbon emission budget required to limit global warming to 1.5°C. This adds pressure on an already tenuous undertaking to stop the planet’s temperature from breaching a threshold beyond which many species may perish. Regulating and reducing plastic production and consumption through binding global bans and design requirements that ensure the circularity of high-risk products can therefore yield enormous benefits that would reduce the demand for virgin plastic production and could give the planet a fighting chance at keeping global warming below the crucial 1.5°C threshold.
By WWF’s count, a majority of governments have already called for, or supported such measures². It’s a question of whether they will keep their promises.
“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. 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 decide on 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,” said Eirik Lindebjerg, Global Plastics Policy Lead and Head of Delegation for WWF at INC-5.
WWF urges governments to reject any attempts at watering down or excluding core measures that must be included in the treaty. Should disputes arise or if a treaty borne out of consensus yields weak measures, governments must be willing to vote to get the treaty that the world needs.
Ahead of the negotiations, the INC-5 Chair has published a streamlined “non-paper” text. This text creates a basis for negotiations that allows governments to focus discussions and prioritize the measures that must be included in the treaty within INC-5’s short time frame of a week.
For the eventual treaty to be fit for purpose, governments must include several core measures, currently only included as placeholders in the “non-paper”. In addition, governments must use stronger language to denote when clear-cut actions such as global and legally binding bans must be mandatory. This is to ensure the treaty does not revert to business-as-usual practices of only implementing voluntary national initiatives, which have dominated the collective response over the last three decades yet yielded little success.
