Despite the result of Friday, the plastic treaty does not yet seem to be dead. Practically all countries have expressed interest in the continuous negotiations: the European Union delegate Jessika Roswall said not to accept “A dead treaty born“And many used their microphone time during the closing plenary to remind others what is at stake.
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HEADSHIP: Tuvalu delegate, Pepetual Election Lati, during a plenary meeting of the Treaty of Plastics in Geneva.
Credit: Joseph Winters/Grist
“We cannot ignore the seriousness of the situation,” said a Madagascar negotiator. “Every day, our oceans, ecosystems and communities suffer from the consequences of our inability to make decisive and unified actions.” The Tuvalu delegate, the electoral latasi of Pepetua, said that not being able to issue a treaty means that “millions of tons of plastic waste will continue to be downloaded in our oceans, affecting our ecosystem, food safety, subsistence means and culture”.
However, without a change in the format of negotiations, in particular around the decision -making process, it is not clear whether further discussions will be fruitful. The rule around the “consent -based decision -based process means that the threat of one vote cannot be used to push the stubborn countries away from their red lines; unless a decision -making vote is introduced by a majority vote, it is unlikely that this dynamic changes.” This meeting has shown that the consent is dead, “said Bjorn Beeler, executive director of international pollutants regarding elimination in the field of elimination, a health health network and the organization of the environment.
Other non -profit organizations and defense groups staged several silent protests during the Geneva interviews by raising the same point, showing signs they read: “Consent kills ambition”.
Senimili Nakora, one of the delegates of the Figi, said during the closing plenary that “it is worth looking for consent if it makes us advance, not if it blocks the process”. Switzerland negotiator, Felix Wertli, said that “this process needs a timeout” and that “another similar meeting may not bring the necessary turning point and ambition”.
Other countries have raised broader concerns about the “process” according to which the negotiations had proceeded. The meetings had been “non -transparent”, “opaque” and “ambiguous”, said during the plenary, probably referring to unclear instructions that they had received from the secretariat, the bureaucratic organ that organizes the negotiations.
Ingner Andersen, the executive director of the United Nations Environment program, told journalists on Friday that at least it had been useful to listen to the joints more clearly their red lines. “Everyone must understand that this work will not stop, because plastic pollution will not stop.”
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Holder: Observatories sit outside the Sala dell’Aglio at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, waiting in the early hours of the morning to start the plenary.
Credit: Joseph Winters/Grist
The plastic subjects industry, which has opposed the control of plastic production and the phase of groups of dangerous chemicals, said that it will continue to support a treaty that “maintains plastic in the economy and outside the environment”. Marco Mensink, secretary of the Council of the Internamental Council of Chemical Associations, said in a declaration: “While not concluding a global agreement to put an end to plastic pollution is a lost opportunity, we will continue to support the efforts to achieve an agreement that works for all nations and can be implemented effectively”.
Environmental groups, scientists and organizations on the front line were disappointed to leave Geneva without an ambitious treaty. They said it would be worse, however, if the countries had decided to compromise Key provisions such as human health and a “transition only“For those who are more likely to be influenced by the changes to global recycling and waste management policies, including waste collectors.
In such circumstances, delegates applauded for not having accepted the final version of the chair text. “I am so happy that a strong treaty was given the priority to a weak treaty,” said Jo Banner, co -founder of the organization based in the United States The descended projectWhich claims to preserve the health and culture of the descendants of Neri slaveized in a band of Louisiana studded with petrochemical structures.
“It seems that our voices have been listened to,” added Cheyenne Rendon, a high political official for the non -profit society of the native nations of the United States, which claimed that the treaty includes a specific language on Rights of indigenous people and the use of indigenous science.
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HEADS: the demonstrators gather outside the Palais des Nations in Geneva, during the interviews for a treatise on global plastics.
Credit: Joseph Winters/Grist
Holder: Defense groups ask that delegates make decisions by voting, not consent, in negotiations on the Treaties for Plastic. Credit: Joseph Winters/Grist
On the contrary, the voices of the observers were not literally listened to during the last moments of the final plenary in Geneva. After more than two hours of statements from national delegations, Valdivieso delivered the microphone in a parade of young participants, indigenous peoples, waste collectors and others who had been present throughout the week and a half of interviews. But only an speaker, from the network of youth plastic actions, was able to give a declaration in front of the United States and the Kuwait asked the presidency to cut them and conclude the meeting.
Now it is up to the secretariat of the Treaty of Plastics to set a date and time for another tour of negotiations, which is not likely to occur until next year. In the meantime, all eyes will be in the meeting of the United Nations Environment Assembly in December, in which Andersen should present a report on the progress of the negotiations-o their lack-and which could present an opportunity for the related countries to lower the ambition of the mandate of the Treaty: the declaration that explains what the Treaty is trying to achieve. Some environmental groups fear that Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia and others will try to change the mandate so that it no longer refers to the “complete life cycle” of plastic, but only to plastic pollution, transforming the treaty into a waste management agreement rather than in one that faces the entire suite of the damage of plastic and the environment, even during the production of the material.
Banner said he doesn’t feel defeated; In fact, it is “more passionate than ever” in continuing to fight for legally binding restrictions on the amount of plastic that the world makes.
“I intend to survive,” he added, and to do it, “we have to stop plastic production”.
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