Plastic polarization
PLASTIC CRAZE — Negotiators from around the world are descending on Canada's capital city this week as more than 4,000 people gather for what feels like make-or-break U.N. talks to complete a global agreement to tackle plastic pollution.
Ottawa is playing host to the fourth of five planned rounds of negotiations intended to result in an agreement by year's end to significantly slash waste that is clogging waterways and damaging biodiversity all over the planet.
The first three rounds have yielded little progress on thorny issues such as whether there should be global limits on production and how to finance aid for developing countries to improve recycling systems and bolster reuse infrastructure — and whether any agreement should be globally binding or left up to individual countries’ discretion.
Canada, alongside the EU and other U.S. allies, is participating in a High Ambition Coalition calling for globally binding production caps. China, Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, among others, argue that the treaty should only deal with the downstream waste management and not the upstream extraction or production.
The U.S. is somewhere in the middle, not joining the HAC but also disputing the China-led group’s assertion that the agreement shouldn’t tackle the full life cycle of plastics.
The key will be how countries thread the needle: Negotiators want countries like the U.S. and China to join the agreement once it’s finalized so that the world’s largest economies are bound by it, but don't want to got so far to entice them that the treaty ends up toothless.
“It's a central question surrounding this entire discussion,” said a U.S. State Department official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, in an interview outside an event in Ottawa on Saturday. “If our goals really are that we're developing an agreement to end plastic pollution into the environment, we need a big tent. So how do we solve this problem if we exclude some of the world's biggest consumers of plastic and clearly some of the world's largest releasers of plastic into the environment?”
Another factor at play that we recently reported: looming elections in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world could increase pressure on negotiators to get the deal done this year before power could change hands in key countries.
Because this is the only round of plastics talks planned in North America, expect to see a large U.S. presence. Activists took advantage of the spotlight with a march and rally on Sunday.
Coming in from Washington are Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Peter Welch (Vt.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) and Rep. Jared Huffman (Calif.). Mary-Eileen Manning, a policy adviser for Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), is also here.
Top State Department brass will also be on hand, including Jose Fernandez, undersecretary for economic growth, energy and the environment, and John Thompson, deputy assistant secretary for environment.
By: Jordan Wolman and Allison Prang
Source: Politico Pro
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