Nations issue ‘Nice Wake-Up Call' on plastic pollution treaty

Euronews

a day ago

Ministers and representatives from more than 95 countries called for an ambitious agreement from global plastics treaty negotiations at the UN Ocean Conference (UNOC) on Tuesday.
Negotiations for the UN plastics treaty collapsed in late 2024 with nations unable to agree on how best to stop millions of tonnes of plastic from entering the environment each year. The next round of negotiations is due to resume in Geneva, Switzerland, in August.
The declaration, dubbed the 'Nice Wake-Up Call', identifies five elements that the signatories say are key to achieving a global agreement that is 'commensurate with what science tells us and our citizens are calling for'.
They include a full lifecycle approach, including: plastic production, phasing out chemicals of concern and problematic products, improvements to product design, effective means of implementation, and incorporating provisions that will allow for a treaty that can evolve.
'A treaty that lacks these elements, only relies on voluntary measures or does not address the full lifecycle of plastics will not be effective to deal with the challenge of plastic pollution,' the Nice Wake-Up call reads.
French Minister for Ecological Transition Agnes Pannier-Runacher told the ocean summit in Nice that the declaration sends a 'clear and strong message'.
More than 200 nations met in South Korea last year for what was meant to be a final round of talks on a landmark agreement to tackle global plastic pollution.
But following two years of negotiations, these talks ended without a final treaty after deep divisions formed between countries calling for plastic to be phased out and oil-producing nations. One of the most contentious points was whether there should be a commitment to cut how much plastic is produced or whether waste can be reduced through recycling efforts.
Pannier-Runacher told journalists at UNOC on Tuesday that comprehensive measures covering the full lifecycle of plastics are needed.
'Better waste management and recycling will not help solve the problem. This is a lie.'
The declaration represents a united front from those countries pushing for an ambitious treaty ahead of the resumed negotiations.
Jessica Roswall, EU Commissioner for Environment, Water Resilience and a Competitive Circular Economy, urged countries to approach the resumed negotiations in August 'through dialogue and with willingness to find common ground'.
With talks in Nice centred around ensuring oceans are protected, an ambitious plastics treaty is key to this goal.
"Every year, over 400 million tonnes of plastic is produced worldwide – one-third of which is used just once,' Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said as UNOC opened on Monday. 'Every day, the equivalent of over 2,000 garbage trucks full of plastic is dumped into our oceans, rivers, and lakes.'
Plastic production is expected to triple by 2060, but currently, just 9 per cent is recycled around the world. Around 11 million tonnes of plastic waste finds its way into the ocean each year, and plastic waste makes up 80 per cent of all marine pollution.
Andres del Castillo, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, says the Wake-Up Call should be a 'floor, not a ceiling'.
'For the Global Plastics Treaty to succeed, Member States must move beyond vague promises and define how they are going to deliver, including through clear, legally binding measures and a human rights-based approach.
'Come August in Geneva, political statements will not be enough. We must see Member States stand up to petrostate and fossil fuel interests on the floor of the negotiations. Their actions will speak louder than words.'
This May was the world's second warmest ever recorded, exceeded only by May 2024, according to the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), bringing unusually dry conditions to northwestern Europe.
Data shows that the global average surface air temperature was 15.79°C last month, 0.53°C higher than the 1991 to 2020 average.
May was an estimated 1.4°C above the average for 1850 to 1900 - the period used to define the pre-industrial average. It interrupts a sweltering stretch where 21 out of 22 months breached this 1.5°C threshold, though EU scientists say this is unlikely to last.
'May 2025 breaks an unprecedentedly long sequence of months over 1.5°C above pre-industrial,' says Carlo Buontempo, director of C3S at ECMWF.
Whether or not the world breaches the Paris Agreement target of keeping global warming below 1.5°C is measured over decades, not single months, meaning it has not technically been passed.
'Whilst this may offer a brief respite for the planet, we do expect the 1.5°C threshold to be exceeded again in the near future due to the continued warming of the climate system,' Buontempo adds.
High temperatures have been paired with dry weather across much of the world over the last few months.
In Europe, May brought drier than average conditions to much of northern and central Europe as well as southern regions of Russia, Ukraine, and Türkiye.
This spring has been a contrast between drier-than-average conditions in the north and west and wetter-than-average conditions across the south and northwestern Russia.
Parts of northwestern Europe saw their lowest precipitation and soil moisture levels since at least 1979. And persistent dry conditions have led to the lowest spring river flow across Europe since records began in 1992.
More than half of the land in Europe and the Mediterranean basin faced some form of drought from 11 to 20 May, according to data from the European Drought Observatory. That is the highest level recorded for that period of time in the year since monitoring began in 2012.
Farmers across northern Europe have voiced fears for their crops, with unusually dry weather delaying the sprouting of wheat and corn. In the UK, the National Farmers' Union warned in early May that some crops were already failing due to the country's driest spring in well over a century.
In late May, the European Central Bank warned that water scarcity puts nearly 15 per cent of the euro area's economic output at risk. New research conducted with experts at the University of Oxford found that water was the single biggest nature-related risk to the euro area economy.