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Ecology & Environment
Mahesh

06/12/23 06:31 AM IST

Status of the UN treaty to end plastic pollution

In News
  • The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), under the United Nations Environment Programme, met in Nairobi on November for its third round of negotiations to develop an international legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution worldwide.
Zero Draft
  • The zero draft as prepared by the Secretariat contained strong options for an international legally binding treaty to end plastic pollution.
  • But during negotiations, member states managed to water down their core obligations, particularly those pertaining to some high-impact elements: primary polymer production, chemicals of concern, problematic and short-lived plastics, trade, and financial mechanisms, among others.
  • Some states also disagreed on the objective and scope under UNEA Resolution 5/14.
  • Most countries agreed that the treaty’s objective should be to end plastic pollution and protect human health and the environment.
  • The same like-minded group objected to including provisions pertaining to eliminating compounds and polymers of concern and problematic and avoidable plastics, which are key in ending plastic pollution, and called for a ‘null option’ despite broad agreement from other countries that were pushing for a binding agreement.
Financial mechanisms
  • A financial mechanism is one of the cornerstones of the treaty to determine how it will be implemented, and it was yet another point of divergence.
  • The zero draft contains options such as imposing a plastic-pollution fee, to be paid by plastic polymer producers, and another on reducing the financial flow into projects with a high carbon footprint. But the like-minded countries demanded that these provisions be deleted altogether from the draft.
Plastic Trade
  • The plastics treaty is expected to plug the holes left open by the Basel Convention, any restrictions on trade is considered to be impinging on the freedom and sovereignty of nations.
  • The WTO rules provide for sufficient scope for trade restrictions when they are “necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health” and nothing prohibits States under international law to regulate or restrict the trade of certain products and materials.
  • The group of like-minded countries rejected every single upstream measure, and diluted midstream measures with the inclusion of voluntary measures and phrases (such as “national circumstances”, “national priorities”, “bottom-up approach”, etc.).
  • Excluding the provision on waste management, in fact, almost all other provisions were watered down to account for “national circumstances and capabilities”. Even under waste management, there is a high risk of these countries insisting on the treaty accommodating unsound solutions.
Source- The Hindu

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