Stalled Geneva talks threaten landmark plastic pollution treaty
The UN negotiations in Geneva follow a failed round in Busan, South Korea, last year. The first week fell behind schedule and produced no clear text, and after a Sunday pause, negotiators returned Monday to a draft riddled with unresolved issues.
"We have to speed up negotiations," said EU environment chief Jessika Roswall, who arrived on Monday for the final stretch. "With four more days to go, we have more square brackets in the text than plastic in the sea."
The 34-page draft, intended as the basis for high-level talks, remains bracketed throughout, reflecting deep divides over scope and ambition.
A US-led alliance wants the treaty to address only plastic pollution, while an EU-led bloc is pushing to include limits on production. OECD projections show that global plastic output could triple by 2060. Rival camps square off The EU-led "ambitious" group, backed by Australia, Canada, Switzerland, the UK, much of Africa and Latin America, and small island states, is seeking binding measures, such as the phasing out of the most dangerous chemicals.
Small island nations "will not stand by while our future is bartered away in a stalemate", said Palau envoy Ilana Seid on Sunday, speaking for 39 members of the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) group.
Opposing them is the 'Like-Minded Group', led by Russia and major petrostates, which wants the treaty to focus on waste management and recycling. Last week, the US aligned with them, sending a memo urging delegations to scrap an article referencing plastic production. The struggle for consensus The treaty requires approval from all states, but observers say low-ambition countries are in no rush to compromise.
"We risk having a meaningless treaty without any binding global rules like bans and phase-outs," Eirik Lindebjerg of NGO WWF told AFP .
"Expecting any meaningful outcome to this process through consensus is a delusion. With the time remaining, the ambitious governments must come together as a majority to finalise the treaty text and prepare to agree it through a vote," he added.
The text has ballooned to include nearly 1,500 bracketed sections – five times more than at the start of the talks – making agreement increasingly unlikely before the talks close on Thursday.
(de)
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