After another endless night of negotiations, the conversations to agree within the UN of the text of the. The meeting held in Geneva (Switzerland), which began on August 5 and in which around 180 countries have participated under the UN umbrella, will close without being able to agree on that treaty that seeks to stop one of the great environmental problems that hit the planet.
In the last two and a half years, the negotiators of these almost two hundred countries have already met six times. Geneva’s was already an extension, because the objective marked within the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in 2022 was that at the end of last year. But, again, the confrontation between countries has made that pact impossible. The intention of most countries is to return to conversations in a few months.
Although there are several friction points that have blocked the agreement for years, the possibility of including limitations to have manifested in these two and a half years of negotiations. On one side there is a wide group of countries, about 80 nations, among which is the European Union, which they consider basic that is put to the production of plastic. On the other side are another smaller group of states whose economies are closely linked to oil – operated by Saudi Arabia – that maintains an insurmountable red line: the treaty must focus only on pollution and not on putting limits on production, as the fossil sector defends.
But limiting production is what many analysts and organizations focused on this type of pollution recommend that the low cost of plastic manufacturing is behind the pollution problem that hits the planet. Several OECD reports warn that, without more solid policies from countries against plastic, world production of this material will increase 70% in 20 years, from 435 million tons in 2020 to 736 in 2040. And the problem is that only 6% of plastics will supply recycled sources. At the same time, the leaks of poorly managed plastics to the environment will increase by 50%, according to the OECD. The cheap and easy thing that is to manufacture this material derived from oil is one of the reasons why the world recycling rate is so low, which in turn leads to plastic waste ends up poorly managed and in the environment.
However, the fossil sector and those oil nations see in plastic and increased production due to the fight against climate change.
During the final phase of the conversations in Geneva, the president of the Committee in charge of leading the negotiations, the Ecuadorian diplomat Luis Vayas, has presented two drafts agree, one on Wednesday and another in the early hours of Thursday from Thursday to Friday. In the first ,. In the second, the door opened to put limits to some specific products, but without clearing whether it would be an obligation to countries or something voluntary.
That second text has been discussed during the early morning closed by the negotiators. And the conclusion is that there was no consensus, they explain sources present at that meeting. This lack of agreement has been explained later in the closing plenary of the conference that has begun after six in the morning and where a formula to resume conversations is expected this Friday.
But Vayas himself has held at the beginning of the meeting that the two drafts he has presented in the final stretch of the negotiation have not been voted in the plenary, so they will not take into account for future appointments. Several negotiators, such as the representative of France, have shown their disappointment and anger, and have slipped criticism of the Presidency and Secretariat of the Committee for the “chaotic” process of the last hours. Others, such as the Colombian representative, have criticized the attitude of blocking of some nations “who do not want an agreement.”
“Not passing a treaty is better than a bad treaty,” he said hours before the last Plenary David Azoulay, of the International Environmental Law Organization, which urged the most ambitious countries to reject the last draft agreement began. Because in that text the key elements, such as the control of production or chemical substances, was designed “to be almost completely voluntary and practically impossible to reinforce over time.”
