The first World Plastic Agreement is in crisis: Can it be saved?

Key negotiations on what would be First ever a global agreement to limit plastic pollution It collapsed last month in the middle of acrymration and distrust. This week, hopes for the agreement suffered another blow when Ambassador Ecuador Luis Vayas Valdivieso resigned as a chair Interviera’s negotiating committee (Inc) for the contract.

Plastic pollution is growing – a planned UN contract to suppress must be ambitious

At the last meeting of the Inc, held in Geneva in August, negotiations entered the night for a long time, but ended up to no avail. It is unclear whether the new chairman will compose another meeting of Inc or decide to complete the process without a contract. The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) – the body of the supervisory negotiations – will meet in Nairobi in December to resolve this issue.

Nature He spoke with Samuel Winton, a researcher at the University of Portsmouth, the UK, who studies the progress of the contract, what went wrong and what could be done to save a process that aims to end one of the greatest blows of humanity on the planet.

Why do we need a global contract to end plastic pollution?

Plastic is a global supply chain, and we often see in politics that when interventions are targeting one part of the supply chain in one country, their influence is very minimal. For example, a prohibition of plastic bags, whether it is successful or not, is a relatively small influence. The global contract provides countries to the opportunity to strategically work together to take true meaningful measures. I am still convinced, despite the challenges of this process, that the plastic contract is necessary.

How significant is Ambassador Vayas Valdivieso resigned?

That’s a very big deal. The role of the president in these processes is critically important because they have set up a work plan, they direct the discussions. Having another person chairing the next meeting – assuming it exists – they will have a big impact on how these conversations progress.

So what would be the best script now?

We need to be ambitious but realistic. I do not think this is realistic – and I am not convinced that it is necessary – to say that by a certain date we will limit the production of plastic at a particular level. My ambition would be if there was a global forced environment in which, using alternative business models or products, the market would decide to adopt them regardless of the prohibition of a particular plastic. These could be regulations that encourage re -use and recharge, or regulations that help companies to switch to alternative models that reduce the amount of plastic used.

Have negotiations achieve something positive so far?

There were a lot of progress among High ambition coalition countries (a group that includes the European Union, the United Kingdom and more than 50 other nations) in understanding where each other are red lines and how the countries can work together. And we see movement from countries like China to a more moderate position. But there are others, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia- “A group of like-minded people”-the positions did not move at all.

Where the procedure acts on consensus and you have several countries that refuse to move on certain things, it becomes very difficult to progress. Another obstacle to progress is the lack of strategic efforts to move the process forward. The high ambition coalition, for example, stated that they were not a negotiating block. A real negotiating block could help achieve a higher progress than we saw.

What should happen now to acquire a contract over the line?

We need to reach the point where the countries and the leadership of the process can work together to deal with current downtime. There will be many people who tell you that the way to do this is a vote mechanism, which would be wonderful. However, numerous countries and UNEP themselves are strongly opposed to the introduction of voting, so it looks very challenging.