A dump truck’s worth of plastic enters our oceans every minute. Many of the foods we eat contain tiny bits of plastic. we may be ingesting about a credit card’s weight of the material every week.
As with climate change, we’re running out of time to solve the plastics problem. According to the landmark 2020 report “Breaking the Plastic Wave,” if we delay dramatic action by just five years, an additional 80 million metric tons of plastic will end up in the ocean by 2040. This is equal to about half of all the plastic that has accumulated in Earth’s oceans from the start of the plastics era up to now.
The fate of the plastics problem will be decided by the five-year-old session of the United Nations Environment Assembly in Nairobi. Leaders from 193 nations will discuss the mandate for the next global agreement on plastic pollution in the coming days. Once that mandate has been established, a treaty is negotiated.
There is still much more to be done in order to make the solution truly global. At Ocean Plastics Leadership Network (OPLN), and we are looking for a way to accomplish that.
OPLN, Greenpeace International and the World Wildlife Fund all ran the OPLN Marathon in preparation for the gathering. Global Plastics Treaty DialoguesFor approximately one year. Our goal was to create an environment where the different groups and people involved in plastics lifecycle around the world could have their voices heard before we negotiate.
This meant bringing together groups that traditionally do not sit at the same table—and often stand in vehement disagreement. The leaders of the biggest companies in plastic industries were sent by petrochemical companies (that manufacture plastic resin), converters, (that make containers out of plastic), and consumer goods companies (like Coca-Cola Company (P&G), Colgate-Palmolive and Colgate-Palmolive).
These stakeholders were seated at the same table as people with whom they might never normally interact: advocacy nongovernmental organizations, industry lobby group, U.N. officials and elected ministers of the government, financial institutions, and waste collector coalitions from South Asia. There have been many interesting conversations that have occurred.
The American Chemistry Council, which represents both the petroleum industry as well as the petrochemical sector, is a clear sign of how far the discourse has advanced. Now, everyone agrees that a plastics deal is necessary. 100 of the largest companies in the world, including Starbucks, Pepsico and Unilever, have also issued a. Joint statementWe call for a legally binding agreement that establishes common global rules for plastic products design and management that reduces virgin plastic production.
There is still uncertainty about the final text of the treaty. While the petrochemical and chemical industries want to keep the emphasis on waste management, environmental groups are pushing for single-use plastics to be phased out, in order to build new reuse systems and address the impact of plastics on human and environmental health, justice, and climate change. They seek a treaty that is similar to the Montreal Protocol, which has been wildly successful. This led to the elimination of ozone-depleting chemicalsIt continues to be a strong regulatory tool.
In the 13 months of our work, it became clear that we require more than the models offered by previous international treaties. OPLN has realized that a “Paris Agreement for Plastics” by itself, would be disastrously slow-moving and insufficient. This leaves out a key piece of the puzzle. Global participation in the negotiation process is not only at the international level but also for local stakeholders from every U.N. Member State
There is a lesson to be learned from the Paris Agreement here: let’s not draw things out and waste crucial years hiring consultants to write national action plans like we did after Paris. We see daily how this is eroding morale, resolve, and some countries are still in this process.
Stakeholders from all walks of the globe will need a forum for discussion and collaboration to ensure a smooth implementation of plans, regardless what is decided at UNEA 5.2. We should have multisectoral, open dialogues in all countries, with regular sessions during negotiations. The ideas and stakeholder mapping—or finding out what everyone wants out of a treaty—in these talks should feed global negotiations, ultimately informing treaty negotiations in a more dynamic and time-sensitive manner. OPLN has already started to convene Country Dialogues in Chile, Malaysia and Indonesia for the global plastic treaty.
Take into account theThere are two billion people around the world, most of them in developing countries, who don’t have access to waste management services.Or they are forced to illegally burn or dump their waste. Or There are 15 to 20,000,000 people who make a living selling plastic scrap.They can find these items on streets, beaches, and in dumps. Both groups are essential to the plastics market and must be represented at negotiating tables.
As our initial country-specific forums have taken place, we’ve started to see the chaos of the plastic crisis become just a bit more tangible. Waste-pickers in Accra, Ghana, have voiced their concerns to a CEO based out of San Francisco. An activist trying to protect their fenceline community against the emissions from a refinery next door spoke directly to an executive of the company that owns it. This simply hasn’t happened in previous global treaty processes.
While the U.N. gathers in Nairobi to discuss, among other things what it will take, we want to encourage national leaders to support dialogues that are accessible to all, in order to quickly expand the range of those who are negotiating in this global agreement.
Participation is essential to the success of the solution. An unpopular treaty will likely stall. Let’s set ourselves up for every holder of every stake to get involved as soon as possible—because there is no time to waste.