Delay in global treaty on plastic pollution raises environmental risks

This month negotiators at the fifth Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) meeting in Busan, South Korea, failed to finalise the global treaty on reducing plastic pollution. By squandering a chance to unite behind a programme, first articulated in March 2022 at the United Nations (UN) Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, to counter the escalating environmental and health problems posed by plastic pollution, the INC-5’s failure has added to the planet’s existential threat. The principal problem was the negotiators’ inability to agree on a text for “upstream measures” — that is, reducing plastic production, and eliminating specified plastic products and certain chemicals in plastic products. Given that plastics are made from fossil fuel, the principal opposition has come from the world’s major producers of oil and gas — Russia, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Kuwait. None of these countries was willing to agree to production cuts principally because plastics are seen as a growth area in the oil and gas business as renewable energy gains traction. The encouraging news is that the door for further negotiations is still open. There is talk of negotiations in 2025 — dubbed INC-5.2 — though a date has not been set.

 

The need for a global agreement is critical. As with other contributors to climate change, the proliferation of plastic trash is not a localised problem. It is contaminating soil and water everywhere with toxic chemicals, and changing the chemical composition of the oceans and impacting their ability to act as an effective carbon sink. Humongous quantities of plastics are draining into oceans and washing up on distant foreign shores, including uninhabited islands. Without an agreement to cut production and use, the problem will become overwhelming in less than 20 years. The irony is that unlike global carbon emission, plastic made from fossil fuel is just about a century old. Over half the plastics have been made over the past 15 years; nearly 500 million tonnes of new plastics are produced every year and it is reckoned that without a cut it will grow by 70 per cent by the end of this year. The undoubted benefits of plastic in medical devices, and in fuel-saving auto parts are increasingly being offset by the throwaway culture in society; as a result, single-use plastics account for 40 per cent of annual plastic production in the form of cutlery, plastic bags, and food wrappers.

 

Though the INC-5 negotiations would have been helpful, a casual observer can easily conclude that India is suffering from a plastic-waste crisis already. A recent study reveals India accounts for almost 20 per cent of global plastic waste annually, which is the fallout from rapid urbanisation and faster economic growth. The chief contributors to this catastrophe are inefficient urban-garbage collection mechanisms, the burning of plastic waste in open landfills, adding to toxic emissions, and a growing mountain of non-recyclable single-use plastic and the low viability of the recycling business. Only about 60 per cent of plastic waste is recycled, mostly by the inefficient informal sector. Increasingly stringent regulatory restrictions have been largely ineffective because they have not been backed by efficient monitoring or implementation — the widespread use of plastic straws despite a ban being one example. It does not need an elaborate UN treaty to underline the urgent need for the state administrations to tackle this national hazard with a sense of urgency.