Geneva (AWP/AFP) – Will states around the world agree that if plastic has favored modern life, it also threatens its existence? The delegates of 184 countries must go beyond their differences to make the copy of the first world treaty against plastic pollution on Thursday, including in the marine environment.
The first week of UN negotiations in Geneva did not lead to any text, the States continuing to display deep divisions since the start of the discussions started two and a half years ago, including on the object and the scope of the future treaty.
Last week, working groups met on technical subjects ranging from the design and production of plastic from hydrocarbons, waste management, including the financing of waste collections in developing countries, as well as a list of problematic molecules and chemical additives for the environment and health.
Negotiations are constantly hampered by a group of essentially oiling countries (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Russia, Iran, Malaysia …) brought together under the nickname “countries that think the same”. The United States is also close to this movement, as well as India.
Opposite, and under the eye of a coalition of scientists who follow the debates, a growing group – qualified “ambitious” – of countries eagerly eager that measures are taken worldwide to regulate production and slow down plastic damage in ecosystems, and even in human health.
“Time press”
This group notably requests that the Treaty has a clause providing for a reduction in the exponential production of plastics, which must triple by 2060. The only solution according to them to curb pollution.
It brings together the 27 countries of the European Union, many countries in Latin America, Africa, Australia, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Canada as well as most island countries, overwhelmed with plastic waste, including tourism.
“Time press,” alerted this weekend Eirik Lindebjerg, WWF advisor to plastic policies.
“The ambitious majority that has been committed for a long time to ask for a strong treaty has chosen to let a handful of countries block the process. Hoping to find an exit door by consensus is an illusion,” he told AFP.
According to him, and other NGOs, “the only possible solution to finalize a text in the time prartured is to use a vote”. Otherwise “we risk having an empty treaty, without a compulsory global rule, nor prohibitions”.
Without engaging on the subject of a vote, which would break the rules of consensus dear to the United Nations, the European environment commissioner Jessika Roswall, who must arrive in Geneva on Monday, hopes that “negotiations accelerate and call on all parties to be constructive and oriented towards the results”.
“With four days before the end of the debates, we have more parentheses in the text (that is to say paragraphs on which the countries have not yet managed to get along, editor’s note) than plastic in the sea, it is time to obtain results,” she said in a brief declaration transmitted to the media on Sunday.
Seventy ministers and around thirty senior administration executives, the environmental officials in a hundred countries, are also expected from Tuesday in Geneva to attend and perhaps help to unlock the end of these negotiations.
AFP/Al
