Chemical & Engineering News, December 2024
Negotiators walked away from the last scheduled meeting to negotiate the United Nations plastics pollution treaty in Busan, South Korea, on Dec. 1 without a finished agreement, a date for the next meeting, or a plan for work before the next session happens. The outcome has left many participants disappointed but not really surprised. The lack of a finished text for the treaty to end plastic pollution is unfortunate, Chris Jahn, council secretary of the International Council of Chemical Associations and president of the industry group the American Chemistry Council, says in a statement. But “this outcome underscores the complexity of addressing plastic pollution on a global scale and the need for further deliberations to achieve an effective, inclusive and workable treaty.”
Frankie Orona, executive director of the advocacy group Society of Native Nations, says the current draft is less ambitious than he had hoped. “The treaty where it is now has left out those that are most impacted,” he says. But Orona says there’s still a chance to create a strong treaty at the upcoming continued session, to be called INC–5.2. The original plan laid out by the UN Environment Programme in 2022 was to create a legally binding agreement by the end of 2024. The meeting in Busan was the fifth of five scheduled meetings to negotiate the treaty over 2 years. Ambiguity, contention, and slow progress have been the norm since the first meeting, INC–1, held in late 2022. As recently as INC–4, which ended this May, no first draft of the text had been produced. Instead, there was a zero draft, a preliminary version with over 70 pages and more than 3,000 notes requesting changes.
