The French Minister of Ecological Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, said she was “disappointed” and “angry” Friday after the failure of negotiations for a treaty against plastic pollution in Geneva. “A handful of countries, guided by short-term financial interests and not by the health of their populations and the sustainability of their economy, have blocked the adoption of an ambitious treaty against plastic pollution,” she said in a declaration.
There will indeed be no treatise against plastic pollution: ten days of tense diplomatic talks ended on Friday at dawn with an observation of bitter failure for the environment and diplomacy.
No consensus could be found
The president of the negotiations, the Equatorian Luis Vayas Valdivieso had presented in 24 hours two different versions of a compromise proposal, the last of which in the night of August 14 to 15 in a feverish and worried atmosphere. But the delegation managers gathered in an exceptional session at dawn did not succeed in agreeing on this latest version despite a sensitive evolution in the formulation.
This text, which included even more than a hundred points to be clarified, constituted an “acceptable base of negotiation”, had indicated two distinct government sources questioned by AFP just after the online text on the UN site of negotiations. In the session, he did not consensus, as reported by the representatives of Saudi Arabia, India and Uruguay.
Uncontrollable plastic production
Throughout the process, a trench warfare has indeed opposed two camps which seem irreconcilable. The “ambitious”, including the European Union, Canada, Australia, many countries in Latin America, Africa and islands, which wanted to reduce global plastic production and control the most worrying molecules for health, in order to reduce pollution.
Opposite, essentially oil countries which refuse any constraint on the production of hydrocarbons at the base of the plastic industry and any ban on dangerous molecules or additives. These countries did not bear that all the negotiation was based on “all the lifespan” of the plastic, that is to say from the substance derived from oil to its state of waste.
The subject is all the more important since the planet has produced more plastic since 2000 than during the previous 50 years, mostly single -use products and packaging.