A delegate poses near a monument by Canadian artist Benjamin von Wong, made with plastic waste, at the fifth UN Environment Assembly, Nairobi. Photo: Reuters/Monicah Mwangi
- Last week, parties to the UN Environment Assembly signed a resolution calling for a legally binding treaty to address plastic pollution.
- The two key elements of the resolution we can expect to see in the prospective treaty are its legally binding nature and its ability to deal with the full lifecycle of plastics.
- The inefficacy of India’s plastic waste laws from 1999 to 2018 vis-à-vis resolving the plastic crisis illustrates the fact that while our efforts have been in earnest, our vision has been clouded.
Last week, parties to the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) signed a resolution calling for a legally binding treaty addressing the full life cycle of plastic, from production to disposal. The approval of the resolution text at the UNEA gathering at Nairobi was followed by country delegations and observers. And rightly so – the plastics treaty, if ratified, will be a significant landmark in multinational environmental governance on the lines of the Montreal Protocol and the Paris Agreement.
So what are the next steps? The draft resolution will be the guiding document for a ‘International Negotiations Committee’ that will deliberate the content, language and structure of the treaty over the next two years.
The two key elements in the current resolution that we can expect to see in the prospective treaty are:
Its legally binding nature – What this means is that the participating countries to the future treaty will agree to reducing their plastics footprint by deploying in mutually agreed interventions and policies. The ultimate aim would be to reduce the production of unsustainable and single use plastics and increasing the recovery of used plastics by improving recycling/recovery infrastructure.
While there was a consensus among parties on the binding nature of the future treaty, India was opposed to the idea and wanted only voluntary measures in line with its independent (hence withdrawn) resolution submitted to the UNEA. The European Union and several African countries opposed the idea and prevailed in retaining the “legally binding” language in the text.
The treaty will tackle the whole lifecycle of plastics and not just at the end of their lives – This will require a critical shift in policymakers’ approach to the crisis, which previously focused on plastic as a “littering” issue that can be fixed by improving waste management systems. Through the UNEA resolution, there is now an acknowledgement of the fact that the world economies are making too much plastic that has overwhelmed waste management systems….ReadMore