Latest news with #negotiatingcommittee
CNA
4 hours ago
- General
- CNA
Commentary: As negotiations on global plastics treaty stall, cleanup efforts are more vital than ever
TORONTO: Representatives at the recent United Nations conference in Geneva have once again failed to negotiate a binding global treaty to tackle plastic pollution. The Switzerland gathering was the sixth round of talks in less than three years and was held after countries failed to reach an agreement at the 2024 meeting in South Korea. Chair of the negotiating committee, Luis Vayas Valdivieso, said countries will now work on finding a date and location for another meeting. Plastic pollution is a global crisis. An estimated 23 million tonnes of plastic waste enters global aquatic ecosystems annually. This massive amount is expected to more than double by 2030 if we don't change our relationship with plastic. To avoid this fate, we cannot focus just on prevention or cleanup – all actions to tackle plastic pollution must occur together. Urgent and coordinated action is needed to reduce plastic production, redesign plastics to manage toxic chemicals and increase recyclability, improve waste management systems and clean up pollution. Among these strategies, cleanup – recovering plastic waste from the environment – is often considered a lower priority compared to prevention at the source. Preventing plastic pollution is imperative, but we must not forget that plastic left in the environment does not disappear. It persists, accumulates, breaks apart into micro- and nanoplastics and continues to cause harm. As long as we are producing plastics, there will be leakage into the environment. As such, cleanup is needed to mitigate ecological, economic and social impacts of plastic pollution now and in the future. SCALING UP CLEANUP SOLUTIONS Cleanup efforts are most often carried out by hand through volunteers. These can range from a couple of people cleaning their local park or beach to large groups coming together for an event. Cleanups remove millions of kilograms of trash from the environment each year. However, with plastic pollution becoming an ever-growing problem, we need to increase cleanup efforts by orders of magnitude. International collaboration is necessary to tackle this global problem. At the University of Toronto Trash Team, we came together with Ocean Conservancy to found the International Trash Trap Network (ITTN), a global network of local groups working together to clean up plastic pollution using trash traps. Trash traps are technologies designed to clean up plastic waste from aquatic ecosystems. They range in design from simple river booms to roaming robots that clean beaches. Trash traps are increasingly used to supplement manual cleanup efforts. They can work around the clock to target pollution, both on land and in waterways, cleaning areas that are unsafe or inaccessible for humans. Some trash traps can also clean up small plastic waste, such as microplastics, that humans often miss as they are difficult to see. With every trash trap programme in the network, local stakeholders come together to clean up plastic waste, monitor local sources and pathways, engage and inform communities about the issue, and contribute to an open-source global cleanup database to inform and motivate upstream solutions to prevent plastic pollution. The ITTN serves as a platform for anyone using a trash trap to share their local impact and facilitate knowledge exchange to motivate and empower global action to clean up, monitor and prevent plastic pollution. BENEFITS OF CLEANUP EFFORTS Although cleanup primarily addresses the symptoms of plastic pollution, it can address the root causes through its additional benefits. Citizen scientists have recorded data on the weight and count of items they collect during cleanup events. This is evident in the extensive datasets compiled by organisations such as Ocean Conservancy, which has logged 40 years of data from volunteer-led International Coastal Cleanup events. Using this data, we can better understand local sources of pollution, identify prominent pollutants and prioritise specific solutions that will have the greatest impact. Policies to reduce single-use plastic consumption in Canada, and in US states like California and Maryland, have been developed based on evidence from cleanup data. Cleanup data collection is a means for developing baselines and to measure policy efficacy. In the United States, shoreline cleanup data was recently used to demonstrate that plastic bag policies significantly reduced the proportion of plastic bags in shoreline litter. Cleanup also serves as a powerful platform for public communication about plastic pollution. A significant driver of our plastic pollution crisis is human behaviour. As such, we must also consider how public understanding and perception of plastic pollution affects behaviour change and support for policy change. Bringing communities together to clean up and share information facilitates community engagement and inspires hope. What's more, by allowing individuals to encounter the problems caused by plastic pollution firsthand, this experience often changes their perspective on the issue from being just another news story to a reality. The hands-on nature of cleanup empowers communities to act, reduce the issue and motivates calls for social and policy change. Although cleaning your local park, beach or waterway might seem like a small act, it is an important tool for reducing plastic pollution, increasing awareness and informing polices that have lasting impact. By strategically increasing cleanup efforts, we can target areas of greatest impact, incite behavioural change, and collect and share monitoring data. This can inform baselines, trends over time, reduction targets and solutions for plastic pollution – reducing the harm of plastic pollution while we work locally and globally to prevent it.
E&E News
3 days ago
- Politics
- E&E News
UN plastic treaty talks fall apart — again
Global leaders again failed to reach an agreement on an international plastic pollution treaty, with disagreements over key issues such as production limits and restrictions on select chemicals persisting. After talks in Geneva collapsed Friday, the United Nations Environment Programme, which oversees the negotiations, said the negotiating committee 'agreed to resume negotiations at a future date to be announced.' Any future talks would be the seventh round and the second extension after delegates failed to reach consensus by their original end-of-2024 deadline. The U.N. gave little guidance about how talks would proceed, saying only it was a process led by member countries. Advertisement 'This has been a hard-fought 10 days against the backdrop of geopolitical complexities, economic challenges, and multilateral strains,' Inger Andersen, UNEP's executive director, said in a statement. 'However, one thing remains clear: despite these complexities, all countries clearly want to remain at the table.'
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Plastic pollution talks fail as negotiators in Geneva reject draft treaties
Once again negotiators will leave the plastic summit this week without a treaty, having failed to reach agreement in what was supposed to have been the final round of talks. The delegates, who were attempting to complete a crucial treaty to end the plastic pollution crisis remain deadlocked over whether it should reduce exponential growth of plastic production and put global, legally binding controls on toxic chemicals used to make plastics. Luis Vayas Valdivieso, the chair of the negotiating committee, wrote and presented two drafts of treaty text in Geneva based on the views expressed by the participants. The representatives from 184 countries did not agree to use either one as the basis for their negotiations. Valdivieso said on Friday morning, as the delegates reconvened in the assembly hall, that no further action was being proposed at this stage on the latest draft. Delegates are still in talks but have not decided on the next steps. Palau, speaking for 39 small island developing states (Sids), voiced frustration at repeatedly investing resources and personnel in such discussion and 'repeatedly returning home with insufficient progress to show our people … It is unjust for Sids to face the brunt of yet another global environmental crisis we contribute minimally to.' Representatives of Norway, Australia, Tuvalu and others countries said they were deeply disappointed to be leaving Geneva without a treaty. The European commissioner Jessika Roswall said the EU and its member states had higher expectations for this meeting, but while the draft fell short of demands, it would be a good basis for another negotiating session. 'The Earth is not ours only. We are stewards for those who come after us. Let us fulfil that duty,' she said. Saudi Arabia said both drafts lacked balance, and Saudi and Kuwaiti negotiators said the latest proposal took other states's views more into account and addressed plastic production, which they considered outside the scope of the treaty. That draft, released early on Friday, did not include a limit on plastic production but recognised that current levels of production and consumption were 'unsustainable' and global action was needed. New language had been added to say these levels exceeded current waste management capacities and were projected to increase further, 'thereby necessitating a coordinated global response to halt and reverse such trends'. The objective of the treaty was also revamped to state that the accord would be based on a comprehensive approach that addressed the full lifecycle of plastics. The biggest issue of the talks has been whether the treaty should impose caps on producing new plastic or focus instead on things like better design, recycling and reuse. Powerful oil- and gas-producing countries and the plastics industry oppose production limits. They want a treaty focused on better waste management and reuse. Every year, the world makes more than 400m tonnes of new plastic, and that could increase by about 70% by 2040 without policy changes. About 100 countries want to limit production. Many said it was also essential to address toxic chemicals used to make plastics. Thursday was the last scheduled day of negotiations, but work on the revised draft continued into Friday. Science showed what it would take to end pollution and protect human health, said Bethanie Carney Almroth, an ecotoxicology professor at Sweden's University of Gothenburg who co-leads the Scientists' Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty. The science supported addressing the full lifecycle of plastics, beginning with extraction and production, and restricting some chemicals to ensure plastics were safer and more sustainable, she added. 'The science has not changed,' Almroth said. 'It cannot be down negotiated.' Environmentalists, waste pickers, Indigenous leaders and business executives travelled to the talks to make their voices heard. Some used creative tactics but are leaving disappointed. Indigenous leaders sought a treaty that recognised their rights and knowledge.
