I participated in the negotiations as an observer, and believe they have produced an unsatisfactory result. Much remains to be done in order to achieve an international, legally binding plastics treaty. These actions include reaching a global consensus on the definition of \u201cplastic pollution\u201d, which is far from being achieved due to countries\u2019 differing interests in plastic, as well as an agreement on how voting should work on substantive issues within the negotiations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kenya\u2019s \u2018plastic ban\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Kenya, the host nation, had banned the making and use of polythene bags as early as 2017. As my plane touched down in Nairobi, an inflight announcement informed me that using disposable plastic bags in Kenya may result in fines. I suddenly recalled two such bags which I\u2019d casually stuffed into my suitcase, and began to envisage my luggage being opened and inspected at customs. I was a little apprehensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fortunately, my luggage wasn\u2019t searched, and no penalty ensued. As my taxi drove through the streets, all manner of plastic bag membranes were mixed in with piles of rubbish by the side of the road. It seemed the ban had not been particularly effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
November is rainy season in Kenya, and it was duly pouring on my morning run the following day. Locals walking to work on either side of the street held backpacks or handbags above their heads to shield themselves. Among all these temporary protections, not a single plastic bag could be seen \u2013 so, actually, perhaps the ban was having some effect after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I took shelter in a roadside police booth, where two on-duty officers proudly told me about the ban: \u201cThis law has been around for a few years now. We police help to enforce the law. We can take anyone caught producing, selling, or using disposable plastic bags to court, which can end with a fine or even imprisonment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was still raining, but I hurriedly left the booth because I had a small disposable plastic bag in my pocket keeping my phone dry. I didn\u2019t want any trouble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"people](\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/\u5168\u7403\u5851\u6599\u516c\u7ea6\u8c08\u5224\u524d\u5915\u5728\u80af\u5c3c\u4e9a\u56fd\u5bb6\u535a\u7269\u9986\u95e8\u53e3\u7684\u96c6\u4f1a\u3002\u56fe\u7247\u6765\u6e90\uff1a\u674e\u5609\u8bda-scaled.jpg\")
<\/div>Debates and disposable cups<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Kenya may be at the vanguard of policies to tackle plastic pollution, but outside the venue and in my experiences in Nairobi in the days prior to the negotiations, I had seen for myself the difficulties of managing plastic waste. This tension was also seen inside, where discussions were testy from the start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The negotiations had just kicked off on the morning of 13 November, and delegates were already disagreeing on the representativeness of the Zero Draft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his speech, the Russian delegate questioned<\/a> its legality: \u201cThis document does not reflect my country\u2019s position. The current Zero Draft prejudges the \u2018direction of negotiations\u2019, and exceeds the mandate of the United Nations Environment Assembly Resolution [to end plastic pollution].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the representative of the world\u2019s largest<\/a> producer and consumer of plastic products, the Chinese delegate expressed his disagreement on a crucial definition: \u201cPlastic doesn\u2019t equate to pollution. Plastic pollution essentially relates to the abandonment and accumulation of discarded plastic products. Other countries have expressed similar views, but this is not reflected in the current Zero Draft.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the other hand, delegates from the High Ambition Coalition<\/a> of countries committed to ending plastic pollution by 2040 all expressed support for adhering to the full lifecycle principle, and called for effective discussions based on the current text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actions speak louder than words: regardless of what delegates said on the floor, during breaks in negotiations, almost all used their own containers. Even with free paper cups provided at water dispensers, no more than 20 were used per day in the main venue, which had over 300 people in attendance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The following afternoon, the negotiations were divided into three contact groups, members of which were decided by the president of the negotiations, to discuss the Zero Draft. Oil-producing nations, represented by Saudi Arabia, promptly focused their \u201cfirepower\u201d on the upstream of the plastic lifecycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the groups, during the discussion of substantive issues, 14 oil-producing nations spoke against the proposal in the Zero Draft on virgin plastic polymers. The proposal offered three options for such polymers, with varying degrees of restriction, and the oil-producing nations objected on the grounds that it exceeded the mandate of the UN Environment Assembly Resolution. The Chinese delegate expressed a similar position<\/a> in a different way: \u201cOne more option, Option 4, should be included, namely that primary plastic polymers should not be included in the [treaty].\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The sharp differences in attitude between delegations is easy to understand, as limiting production would affect the industrial interests of some countries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n According to statistics from the Center for International Environmental Law, a US-based organisation, over 143<\/a> lobbyists from the petrochemical industry attended the meeting, a 36% increase on the previous one in Paris. Not only concerned with the upstream, petrochemical lobbyists, including ExxonMobil, also wanted a piece of the downstream pie. They promoted the chemical recycling of waste plastic, which means obtaining oil, gas, carbon and other chemicals from plastic waste through a series of reactions. At one side event, company lobbyists gave away Rubik\u2019s cubes and frisbees printed with depictions of chemical-recycling methods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the sidelines of the negotiations, researchers from the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives<\/a> and the universities of Kentucky and Roskilde told me they believe that, given China\u2019s waste incineration overcapacity<\/a>, there is no need to build up a chemical recycling industry. The government\u2019s crackdown on small, highly polluting, oil-producing chemical recycling projects will not structurally affect waste management, they noted. This is because large-scale chemical recycling projects require significant initial investment and long-term, stable supply of raw materials, so once established, they\u2019d be difficult to shut down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Twelve side events<\/a> were held in Nairobi, covering topics such as marine plastics, funding mechanisms and waste management. At the tenth event, delegates from China, Japan, and other nations introduced their country\u2019s experience in waste management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pui Yi Wong, an observer delegate from Malaysia, said at this event: \u201cAfter China banned the import of \u2018foreign rubbish\u2019, Southeast Asian nations received more rubbish from the United States and other developed countries.\u201d She then asked how China had cleaned up the plastic that had leaked into the environment as a result of imports before the ban, which had entered into force by the end of 2017. Regrettably, this question was not directly answered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the event, I ran into Pui Yi and another delegate from the Environmental Investigation Agency, a British NGO, who asked again about China\u2019s ban on \u201cforeign rubbish\u201d. I wasn\u2019t sure of the actual answer, and only knew that the policy might have been influenced by the documentary Plastic Kingdom<\/a> by Wang Jiuliang, so I recommended they watch it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The final day of negotiations was held on 19 November, six days after the first. Due to continued objections against the text submitted by the contact groups \u2013 even within the groups themselves \u00ad\u2013 the meeting chair, Gustavo Meza-Cuadra, was forced to adjourn at the beginning of the closing session to allow the groups to continue their discussions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The session did not resume until 6:10 pm, but was quickly adjourned again because a consensus on the treaty\u2019s scope of restrictions could not be reached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to a spreadsheet describing the situation on the ground, jointly compiled by observer organisations, delegates from various countries or groups of countries had made over 2,171 statements on the Zero Draft by this point in the negotiations, of which 31% were in opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At 11:01 pm, the chair hastily wrapped up a week of negotiations by quoting Nelson Mandela: \u201cSometimes it falls upon a generation to be great. You can be that great generation.\u201d He appeared relieved after uttering these words, his face beaming with a smile so rarely seen, perhaps because he no longer had to bear the brunt of endless disputes and questions thrown around by delegates from various countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By now, the Zero Draft that had served as the basis for the negotiations had grown ever longer, from 31 to 70 pages<\/a>, as it came to include the views and opinions of all parties. Since the proposal to carry out interim work before the fourth session of negotiations \u2013 to be held in April in Ottawa, Canada \u2013 had not been adopted, and the Nairobi session had shelved procedural issues, the meeting in Ottawa may be even more challenging. If negotiations drag on with no real progress, the plastics treaty may eventually develop into a loose, multilateral framework<\/a>, or even be \u201caborted\u201d altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The opinions expressed in this article are the author\u2019s and do not necessarily represent those of their organisations.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Negotiations have not been going smoothly, leaving the future of a binding treaty hanging in the balance, observes Li Jiacheng<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3907,"featured_media":118041,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50039901,760],"tags":[569,578],"hashtags":[],"country":[50040759],"class_list":["post-118029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ocean","category-pollution","tag-negotiations","tag-plastics","country-kenya"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"two](\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/\u63a5\u89e6\u7ec4\u4f1a\u8bae\u671f\u95f4\u4e24\u4f4d\u4ee3\u8868\u7528\u81ea\u5e26\u676f\u63a5\u6c34\u3002\u56fe\u7247\u6765\u6e90\uff1a\u674e\u5609\u8bda-scaled.jpg\")
<\/div>Petrochemical lobbyists<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
An incomplete picture of China\u2019s experience<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"large](\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/2023\u5e7411\u670817\u65e5\u4e2d\u56fd\u4ee3\u8868\u56e2\u53c2\u4e0e\u4e3b\u6301\u7684\u5e9f\u5f03\u7269\u7ba1\u7406\u8fb9\u4f1a\u73b0\u573a\u5ea7\u65e0\u865a\u5e2d\u3002\u56fe\u7247\u6765\u6e90\uff1a\u674e\u5609\u8bda-scaled.jpg\")
<\/div>Closing session proves hard to close<\/h2>\n\n\n\n