Hopes for a worldwide plastics treaty gained some momentum at the fourth of five scheduled summits to hash out an agreement. But while the week-long session of the UN International Negotiating Committee made some headway, it didn’t leave environmentalists feeling overly optimistic. INC-4, which took place the last week of April in Ottawa, Canada, was the latest step in a United Nations effort to develop international law to control plastic pollution. Representatives of 170 nations converged on Ottawa, where they greatly shortened a lengthy draft text, and reached consensus on the need for intersessional work before the fifth and (according to plan) final summit to agree on a treaty. This hoped-for final summit is scheduled in late November/early December 2024 in Busan, South Korea. In 2022, the United Nations Environment Programme set a goal of finalizing the treaty by 2025, via five negotiating sessions. Observers left Ottawa in a somewhat better mood than after the INC-3 session held last November in Nairobi, Kenya, where the talks stalled as delegates spent long hours debating procedure rather than policy, and where nations that produce and consume the most plastic and petroleum resisted progress. However, a major sticking point in Ottawa arose over a first time ever proposal made by Peru and Rwanda to reduce the production of primary plastic polymers by 40% in 15 years, from a 2025 baseline. While 29 nations backed these ambitious production limits, the United States, United Kingdom and other developed nations did not. Further discussion on production…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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