Climate Home News, December 2024
Last month in the South Korean city of Busan, government negotiators failed to agree to set up a treaty to tackle plastic pollution, instead only deciding to continue the two years of negotiations in 2025. While over 100 developed and developing countries wanted the treaty to limit plastic production, a handful of oil and gas reliant states—vocally led by Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran—wanted it to focus on the consumption and recycling of plastics.
Experts told Climate Home that Iran’s opposition is largely because plastic production is a lifeline to the country’s sanction-hit economy as it is a key source of foreign currency to contain soaring inflation and of jobs in some of the country’s poor and dissatisfied southern provinces.
