NEW YORK, September 20, 2024 — As Ministers and Heads of State gather in the margins of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) and New York Climate Week to discuss the future of the plastics treaty, over 160 organizations are calling on Heads of State and Ministers to commit to advancing a plastics treaty that controls and reduces plastic production. The letter, dated September 20, 2024, comes on the eve of the multiple, closed-door, high-level meetings focused on the plastics treaty.
UNGA comes nine weeks before the fifth and final scheduled session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to advance the plastics treaty (INC-5). While recent G7 Presidential and Ministerial commitments and potential high-level position changes from governments like the United States signal an openness to reducing plastic production, there is concern that negotiators will delete commitments to addressing plastic production through compromises and dealmaking.
Groups are especially concerned with the back-to-back high-level meetings until INC-5, many of which do not involve civil society, and Indigenous Peoples, and some of them may not guarantee the presence of members of some high-ambition Member States from the Global South. “For the plastics treaty to deliver on the promise of ending plastic pollution, measures that address the full lifecycle of plastics, including those aiming at substantially reducing virgin plastic production, with a view towards a phase-out, are essential,” says Daniela Duran Gonzalez, Senior Legal Campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law. “Any treaty that leaves mandatory, legally binding targets to reduce production on the floor will allow plastic producers to continue and increase plastic production. Making more and more plastic will undermine the achievement of global climate goals and compromise human and environmental health. These steps are proving to be economically reckless. Ministers cannot, and should not, trade away production to secure a quick deal in Busan, and should be calling for results to control and reduce production by the end of the negotiations.”
Letter signatories further underscore that plastic production is undermining the goals of the Paris Agreement and fueling the climate crisis, with production expected to consume up to one-third of the remaining carbon budget by 2050, surpassing the energy and transportation sectors.
The letter states, “Plastic production is projected to almost triple in the next decades, significantly exacerbating its impacts. With more than 1,400 new fossil fuel-dependent projects to expand production capacity set to be built by 2027, the disproportionate harm and toxic exposure already faced by Indigenous Peoples and frontline and fenceline communities living near these production sites will surely intensify.”
Signatories call on Ministers to deliver supply-side rules to control and reduce production by the end of the negotiations and to include a global production reduction target unequivocally accompanied by clear, mandatory pathways for each country to deliver the necessary reductions.
“If we do not intervene now, plastic production will nearly triple in the coming decades and frontline and Indigenous communities around the world will bear the brunt of this toxic buildout,” adds Swathi Seshadri, Director (Research) and Team Lead, Oil and Gas at the Centre for Financial Accountability. “Civil society and Indigenous Peoples representatives have been unequivocal in their demand to keep production in the treaty. We will not stand by idly while select high-level officials from predominantly Global North countries trade away our futures. World leaders have a chance to do the right thing today, not tomorrow, and address plastic production: we are watching.”
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