Delegations from some 175 countries are converging on Ottawa this week to try to advance a first global agreement to tackle the environmental burden of plastic — a material that is omnipresent in our lives, but which poses an increasingly serious threat for the planet’s ecosystems and climate.
“If Captain James Kirk visited Earth today, he would probably call it the plastic planet. From the highest mountains to the deepest ocean trenches, to the air we breathe and the blood that flows through our bodies, this eternal substance has proven to be the ultimate winner in the race through time and space. “space”, lamented Saturday in The duty actor William Shatner, who played Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek and who has been campaigning against plastic pollution for several years.
A point of view which is consistent with the position of several environmental organizations, but also the speech of the Director General of the United Nations Environment Program, Inger Andersen. “Plastic is everywhere,” she said in substance on the eve of the opening of the fourth session of the United Nations Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC-4), which is being held from 23 to April 29 in Ottawa.
Mme Andersen, who repeats that recycling plastic is not enough, calls for an ambitious agreement paving the way for the elimination of single-use plastic and “drastically reducing” the flow of new plastic.
It must be said that the current trajectory is leading us towards marked growth in production. This now exceeds 460 million tonnes each year, and it could further double, or even triple, by 2050. And less than 10% of the plastic produced each year in the world is recycled, according to data from the OECD. The rest notably represents a threat to biodiversity and also manages to find its way into the human body.
Plastic and climate
This appetite for plastic now accounts for 12% of global oil demand and more than 8% of natural gas demand, according to data from a new study by the Lawrence-Berkeley National Laboratory, managed by the University of California. Result: emissions associated with this production already exceed 2.25 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases and are expected to rise to 6.8 billion tonnes in 2050. This is the equivalent of 1700 fuel plants with coal.
In this context, the countries meeting in Ottawa are in a hurry to conclude an agreement by the end of the year. And time is running out. After this meeting on Canadian soil, there will only be one negotiation phase left, in South Korea at the end of the year. It therefore remains to be seen to what extent the States will manage to reconcile divergent positions, after parting ways in Nairobi last November against a backdrop of disagreement linked to the scope of the treaty and criticism from environmental organizations in the face of the lack of progress. concrete.
The positions defended are very divisive. On the one hand, there are countries that want to substantially reduce plastic production. And on the other, there are countries which want a treaty which mainly concerns the management of plastic, and in particular recycling.
“We have a text. It is a basis, even if there remains a lot of work to be done on it,” admits the federal Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault, who hopes to play a “facilitator” role as host of the negotiations. The objective, he adds, is to “achieve a text with 60 to 70% of the elements validated” at the end of the discussions in Ottawa.
But the game is far from won, underlines Alexandre Lillo, professor in the Department of Legal Sciences at UQAM and expert in international environmental law. “The negotiations are quite complex. The text discussed doubled in size during the last session, in Kenya, and the positions defended are very divisive. On the one hand, there are countries that want to substantially reduce plastic production. And on the other, there are countries which want a treaty which mainly concerns the management of plastic, and in particular recycling. »
Some countries are in fact calling for ambitious measures, notably the 65 members of the High Ambition Coalition, chaired by Rwanda and Norway, which includes the majority of European Union countries. Others, mainly oil-producing states, are resistant to the idea of quickly rolling back the addition of new plastic.
To speed up the pace, countries, including France, are calling for the creation of inter-phase working groups on the various issues to be resolved, in particular: the list of problematic and avoidable plastic products, that of polymers and substances of concern to be prohibited, the establishment of ecodesign criteria, etc.
“Circular economy”
As for Canada, where less than 10% of plastic is recycled, it mainly advocates the path of a “circular economy” of plastic, and not the pure and simple reduction of its massive use. “This is the approach that seems most promising to us,” a senior government official said last week during a technical briefing to the media. Ottawa wants to “increase ambition and harmonize measures to combat plastic pollution,” adds the federal Ministry of the Environment by email.
“It’s a bit of the classic dynamic of negotiations, as we can see in the context of climate negotiations,” underlines Mr. Lillo. The latter therefore fears a “fairly soft” agreement, built on “compromises” which would not lead to an agreement ambitious enough to resolutely tackle this growing environmental problem.
Proof that it is difficult to make a shift towards less dependence on plastic due to resistance from the industrial lobby, last November the Federal Court rejected the listing of plastic items as “toxic substances” in the Canada. The move could impact the government’s ban on single-use plastic items, since it can only regulate substances for environmental protection purposes if they are listed as toxic in law.
In the spring of 2021, the Trudeau government added manufactured plastic products to the list of toxic substances listed in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. They were therefore considered to have a harmful effect on the environment or biological diversity.
This political decision, supported by scientists and environmental groups, was however challenged in court by several companies in the plastic and petrochemical sector, united within the Coalition for Responsible Use of Plastic. Ottawa has appealed the case, and it should be heard by June.