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Canada backs call for plastic production limits at international summit

#120 of 121 articles from the Special Report: Negotiating survival

Plastic statue outside the Shaw Centre in Ottawa in April 2024, where the previous round of negotiations for a global plastics pollution treaty was held. Photo by John Woodside/Canada's National Observer

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Canada is calling for global limits on plastic production as countries enter the final days of negotiations for a new legally binding international treaty.

Plastic production is crucial to address because of its harmful impact on both the environment and climate, experts say. Already global plastic production is responsible for billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions each year, and those emissions are set to grow if production continues to increase. And, as more plastics are produced and consumed, microplastics and hazardous chemicals are building up in the environment and affecting human health.

In a proposal put forward Thursday, Canada joined a powerful negotiating bloc of over 100 countries working to ensure the plastics treaty includes a global target to reduce virgin plastics to sustainable levels. No specific target was included in the resolution, but environmental advocates say it’s nonetheless a positive development in the negotiations to see countries coalescing around a plastic production reduction goal for the treaty, obligating countries to tackle supply, rather than just demand. 

“We are joining a broad group of countries who share our ambition for a meaningful global plastics treaty that tackles the most harmful plastics and the toxic chemicals used in their production,” said Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault in a statement. “This is only one step, however. It is a resolution that will help us achieve a high level of ambition in the final agreement.”

The proposal comes as world governments meet in Busan, South Korea for the fifth and final round of talks to land a new international treaty. The plastics treaty is a missing piece to tackle the triple threat of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, given countries have already signed treaties to limit global warming (the Paris Agreement signed in 2015), and protect nature (the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework signed in 2022).

The resolution Canada is endorsing is backed by some Western governments like the United Kingdom, European Union, and Australia, as well as many African countries including Niger, Ethiopia and Rwanda. By proposing terms to tackle the production of plastics, the resolution is a building block aimed at overcoming stalemates in the negotiations. In August, Reuters reported the United States would back a global target to reduce plastic production marking a significant shift in position as a major plastic producer, but the country was not a signatory to this resolution.  

At the halfway point at this week’s talks negotiators were reportedly clashing in heated debate with some countries accusing fossil fuel-producing states, led by Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran, of blocking progress. Those countries do not want the treaty to tackle plastic manufacturing, and are pushing instead for a focus on managing plastic demand and waste. 

Many fossil fuel companies and allied governments understand that as countries phase out fossil fuels to heat buildings and power vehicles their business is under threat. Many see growing plastic production as a way to increase oil and gas production so they are on the ground in South Korea in full force.

If fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists were their own delegation, they would be the largest delegation at the conference, according to an analysis from the Center for International Environmental Law, which found at least 220 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists have registered for the current round of negotiations. 

Canada joined a powerful negotiating bloc of over 100 countries working to ensure a new plastic pollution treaty includes a global target to reduce virgin plastics to sustainable levels — a measure Big Plastic is fighting tooth and nail.

Those industry lobbyists outnumber an international network called the Scientists' Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty three-to-one, and outnumber the Indigenous Peoples’ Caucus nine-to-one. 

Against a backdrop of fossil fuel lobbying, Karen Wirsig, senior program manager for plastics with Environmental Defence, said an ambitious plastics pollution treaty must commit countries to reducing plastic production. 

“While the proposal doesn’t set out a target, it provides a path to one,” she told Canada’s National Observer from South Korea. She said Canada should also support a financial package at the negotiations for developing countries that would help them shift their economies away from plastics. 

The proposal, if agreed to, would commit countries to decide a virgin plastics reduction target at their first meeting under the treaty, publish plastic reduction plans, and every five years go through a stocktaking process to review progress. Like how the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 — and then countries continued to negotiate its terms — at similar meetings under the plastics treaty, countries would continue to negotiate the elimination of plastic pollution.

The link between plastic production and plastic waste is also clear. According to the OECD, plastic production from 2000 to 2019 doubled, and over that same period of time so did plastic waste. Ultimately, only nine per cent of plastic waste was recycled, compared to 19 per cent that was incinerated, and 22 per cent dumped in uncontrolled landfills, burned in open pits, or leaked into the environment. 

Investigative reporting from NPR and PBS found that as early as 1974, oil and gas industry representatives doubted recycling plastic could ever be economically viable even as the industry promoted recycling as a way to protect the environment. 

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