📝 On Wednesday 2nd of March, the United Nations approved a landmark agreement to begin negotiations on the world's first-ever global plastic pollution treaty.
🕜 Member states held some 90 hours of late-night negotiations over the last week, to agree on the outline of a pact to fight plastic pollution.
🤝 Government officials cheered after the adoption of a resolution to create a legally binding plastic pollution #treaty, which is due to be finalised by 2024.
📣 The UN Nations and the media describe it as the most significant environmental deal since the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Reuters reports that a draft resolution stated the plastic treaty would be both legally binding and address the "full lifecycle of plastic", which could cover production and packaging design, as well as waste.
🗣 This is good. But not good enough, as the terms in the draft resolution are broad and a U.N. intergovernmental negotiating committee will now have to contend with countries and business interests.
🧨 Switzerland's ambassador for the environment Franz Perrez pointed to the divisions "between those who are ambitious and want to find a solution and those who don't want to find a solution for whatever reasons", putting future negotiations in doubt.
➰ So how can this treaty be effective? As the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and WWF rightly described, the keys to the success of this treaty would be:
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Have a clear focus on ways we can stop the problem before it starts - not just how to improve cleaning it up.
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Set global harmonized standards and give clear definitions for success.
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Support all countries to play their part.
📆 So let’s see what this treaty will bring in 2024…
Sources: Reuters , The Business case for a UN treaty on plastic pollution made by BCG, WWF and Ellen MacArthur Foundation