Australia and other nations must deliver a strong and effective global treaty to end plastic pollution, said World Wildlife Fund Australia (WWF-Australia), ahead of the fifth and final negotiating meeting.
The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee session is scheduled to take place from 25 November to 1 December 2024 at the Busan Exhibition and Convention Centre in Busan, Republic of Korea.
Delegates from more than 175 countries are working to craft new global binding rules that could reduce plastic production and consumption and ban the most polluting plastic products.
WWF-Australia said the treaty is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a global solution to this worsening crisis and unless governments agree on an ambitious treaty with legally binding global rules, plastic pollution is likely to triple by 2040.
Kate Noble, WWF-Australia’s, plastic pollution expert who is attending the negotiations in Busan, said the current patchwork of rules and guidelines is not fit for purpose.
“A global treaty with legally binding obligations, and not voluntary guidelines, is the only way to end the plastic pollution crisis,” she said.
“This is achievable, but negotiators must prioritise the most urgent and essential measures.”
The conservation organisation is urging governments to include explicit text to ban and phase out the most harmful plastic products, mandatory product design requirements to ensure remaining products are safe and easy to reuse and recycle, identify the level of funding that governments need to commit and how resources will be disbursed, and mechanisms for strengthening the treaty over time.
It said if such measures are not mandated globally, projected increases in plastic production by 2050 could account for 21-30 per cent of the world’s carbon emission budget required to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Noble said Australia has a personal investment in the treaty, as an estimated 140,000 tonnes of plastic waste leaks into the Australian environment annually.
“Australia and more than 100 governments have been calling for the right measures, and in Busan they need to turn these words into action by cementing them in the treaty text,” she said.
“Plastic pollution is a global scourge but its impact across Oceania – a large continent that is predominantly oceans, and home to some of the world’s most incredible biodiversity and pristine marine environments – is particularly horrific.
“No island or marine ecosystem is untouched, and we can physically see the crisis growing day by day.”
Noble said while among the most impacted, Pacific islands contribute the least to the problem of skyrocketing levels of plastic production and proliferation of single use plastics, which comprise most of the plastic pollution.
“At the final round of treaty negotiations, it is crucial that the international community steps up to match Pacific leadership on this issue, and delivers the robust, comprehensive treaty the world desperately needs,” she said.
For more information, www.unep.org/
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