Latest news with #NiceWake-UpCall
Euronews
03-08-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
Global Plastics Treaty hangs in the balance as talks resume in Geneva
Talks to secure a Global Plastics Treaty are restarting in Geneva on Tuesday (5 August), with negotiators striving to break a deadlock that prevented a deal last year. Over the next fortnight, national delegations need to reach a unilateral consensus on many critical issues in order to create a legally binding international agreement on plastic pollution. The second part of the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5.2) follows the collapse of talks in Bhusan, South Korea in December last year. As awareness about the plastics crisis - and its devastating environmental and health dimensions - grows, momentum is building for a treaty to match the enormity of the challenge. At the UN Ocean Conference last month, ministers and representatives from more than 95 countries signed a declaration dubbed the 'Nice Wake-Up Call', spelling out what's needed for a meaningful outcome. Crucially, they said, a full lifecycle approach is required, with mandatory limits around plastic production and phasing out toxic chemicals. And earlier this week, a group of more than 60 leading scientists from around the world urged governments to agree on ambitious, enforceable action in Geneva. "This is not just a call for action, this is the scientific community bearing witness," said Professor Steve Fletcher, director of the Revolution Plastics Institute, and editor-in-chief of the Cambridge Prisms: Plastics plastics journal in which the letters were published. "We've watched the evidence pile up for decades. This treaty is a test of whether the world is prepared to govern plastics in a way that reflects the scale and urgency of the crisis." A separate report from Greenpeace, also published this week, makes clear that leaders are up against some antagonistic forces in the form of industry lobbying and countries lacking ambition. What do scientists say is needed to solve the plastics crisis? The scientists argue that the stakes at INC-5.2 are sky high. This is the world's best opportunity to secure a binding agreement that tackles plastic pollution across its entire lifecycle. Some major petrostates instead want to focus on plastic waste, arguing there is no need to limit production if the end product is tackled. But the open letters lay out an evidence-based roadmap for treaty negotiators that covers the whole supply chain, with targets to cap and reduce plastic production. They want to see global health safeguards created to protect human health, since nano- and microplastics have been found to infiltrate all parts of the body, from our brains to breastmilk. "There is clear and growing evidence that plastic poses serious risks to human health. Yet the approach to health protection in the treaty still hangs in the balance,' says Dr Cressida Bowyer, deputy director of the Revolution Plastics Institute at the University of Portsmouth. The treaty must directly address human health impacts in its core obligations, she argues. Some experts also make a strong case for including trade in the agreement. Nearly 99 per cent of plastics are derived from fossil fuels, according to the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), and plastic takes shape as it is shipped around the world. "To be effective, the global plastics treaty must address the real-world architecture of the plastics economy, where trade is the connective tissue,' says Professor Maria Ivanova, of Northeastern University in the US. 'Trade must be reimagined as a tool for transformation. If trade is the connective tissue of the plastics crisis, it must also be part of the cure." And to design a truly 'environmentally ambitious and structurally sound', in Prof Ivanova's words, corporate lobbying and greenwashing must be kept away from independent scientific oversight. Are plastic companies blocking action? According to CIEL, 220 fossil fuels lobbyists attended the fifth round of treaty negotiations in Busan last December. This made lobbyists the single largest delegation at the talks - more than the EU and its member states combined, and outnumbering the delegates from the Scientists' Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty by three to one. A new report from Greenpeace UK reveals how the Global Plastics Treaty is under threat from the tactics of some of the world's largest petrochemical companies. It says that these companies have been systematically lobbying against cuts to plastic production while generating massive profits from the growing plastics business. The report claims that since the start of the treaty process in November 2022, petrochemical giants Dow, ExxonMobil, BASF, Chevron Phillips, Shell, SABIC and INEOS have sent 70 lobbyists to negotiations. Greenpeace says these lobbyists have worked to weaken ambition and shift attention to 'false' solutions like chemical recycling. Away from the negotiating halls, these firms are accelerating production. Since the treaty talks began, seven companies alone have produced enough plastic to fill 6.3 million rubbish trucks, Greenpeace says, equivalent to five and a half trucks every minute. 'Our research shows that those with the most to lose from meaningful regulation are working hardest to obstruct it,' says Anna Diski, the report's author and senior plastics campaigner at Greenpeace UK. 'We can't allow the corporations who profit from plastic pollution to write the rules or we'll end up with a toothless Treaty. 'It's time to ban lobbyists from the talks and for UN Member States to stand firm and support a strong Treaty.' "The scientific consensus is clear," adds Professor Fletcher. "The only question is whether governments will respond. This treaty could be transformative, but only if it avoids the traps of voluntary commitments and techno-fixes. This is the world's last chance to act boldly." You can read more about the treaty's pathway over the past three years here, as well as an explainer on why INC-5.1 failed to secure an agreement.
Euronews
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
Nations issue ‘Nice Wake-Up Call' on plastic pollution treaty
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.
