ELUSIVE MIDDLE GROUND
After three years of negotiations, nations wanting bold action to turn the tide on plastic garbage were trying to build last-minute bridges with a group of oil-producing states.
“We need to have a coherent global treaty. We can’t do it on our own,” said Environment Minister Deborah Barasa of Kenya, a member of the High Ambition Coalition seeking aggressive action on plastic waste.
Barasa told AFP that nations could strike a treaty now, then work out some of the finer details down the line.
“We need to come to a middle ground,” she said. “And then we can have a step-wise approach in terms of building up this treaty … and ending plastic pollution.”
“We need to leave with the treaty,” she added.
Back-to-back regional and cross-regional groups huddled in meetings throughout Thursday.
The High Ambition Coalition, which includes the European Union, Britain and Canada, and many African and Latin American countries, wants to see language on reducing plastic production and the phasing out of toxic chemicals used in plastics.
A cluster of mostly oil-producing states calling themselves the Like-Minded Group – including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Russia, Iran, and Malaysia – want the treaty to focus primarily on waste management.
MACRON’S CALL TO ACTION
The plastic pollution problem is so ubiquitous that microplastics have been found on the highest mountain peaks, in the deepest ocean trench and scattered throughout almost every part of the human body.
On current trends, annual production of fossil-fuel-based plastics will nearly triple by 2060 to 1.2 billion tonnes, while waste will exceed one billion tonnes, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
With 15 million tonnes of plastic dumped in the ocean every minute, French President Emmanuel Macron asked: “What are we waiting for to act?”
“I urge all states gathered in Geneva to adopt an agreement that truly meets the scale of this environmental and public health emergency,” he posted on X.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
