'Time bomb' threatens the environment.

All types of plastic, whether single-use or long-term, contribute to the increase in microplastics and nanoplastics, creating a "time bomb" for future generations. This pollution bomb will explode if the world doesn't act strongly enough now.

Seven years after the 21st Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21), Paris has once again become the center of global environmental diplomacy .

Over 1,000 delegates from 175 countries and 3,000 representatives from NGOs, industry, and science gathered at UNESCO headquarters from May 29 to June 2 to undertake an ambitious yet challenging mission: negotiating a legally binding multilateral agreement to “end plastic pollution” by the end of 2024. This is considered the most important global agreement since the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

After five arduous days, negotiators finally adopted a resolution at the plenary session that concluded late on June 2nd, stating that "the International Negotiating Committee (INC) has requested the Chairman of the Committee, with the assistance of the secretariat, to draft a first version of a legally binding international treaty" immediately following this conference.

Plastic waste is everywhere in Lahore, Pakistan. (Photo: AFP/VNA)

According to the resolution, the draft text will be considered at the third meeting of the INC, which will take place in Kenya next November. Following that, further rounds of negotiations will take place in Canada in April 2024 and conclude with a formal agreement in South Korea by the end of 2024.

Therefore, it is difficult to say that the second round of negotiations on ending global plastic pollution in Paris was a success. Looking back at the conference, negotiators were only able to get to the heart of the matter after the first two days became bogged down in procedural issues regarding the adoption of the draft future agreement. Until the very last moment, 175 countries had still not found common ground on whether to adopt a two-thirds majority voting system when consensus could not be reached.

However, there was encouraging progress. While it didn't lead to a significant document, the conference at least helped to delineate differences and clarify positions each participating party might be willing to accept. It also laid the groundwork for the process of drafting a document, expected to take place over the next six months before the third round of negotiations in Kenya.

Significantly, this time, the "highly ambitious alliance" was further strengthened with the participation of 58 countries led by Norway and Rwanda, including members of the European Union (EU), Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Japan… Conversely, Paris also showed the formation of a bloc of countries that slowed down the progress of the discussions. This was the oil and gas and plastics manufacturing bloc, which included Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, the United States, China, India, Russia, and Brazil.

Two blocs with differing, even opposing, visions of global solutions to plastic pollution form two opposing camps: one group of countries wanting to protect a system bound by a two-thirds majority, and the other group of opposing countries wanting to impose consensus rules like the Paris Agreement on climate change. Or, the other group of countries "willing" to see the world reduce production according to a new model, and the other group of countries "reluctant" to simply recycle to reduce plastic pollution.

Given what has transpired, the negotiation process appears to be in its early stages, while the most contentious issues concerning production control, consumption, use, recycling, and financial obligations remain to be discussed in the remaining three rounds. It will be a real battle of viewpoints between nations, NGOs, scientists, and lobbyists alike.

French Minister for Ecological Transition Christophe Béchu stated that the challenges facing the upcoming negotiations are immense, and the most important thing is to reach a binding treaty, equipped with adequate enforcement mechanisms and establishing a specialized body on plastics, similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Furthermore, all countries and industries must be obligated to reduce plastic production before considering solutions to increase recycling.

In reality, it's not easy to convince the bloc of oil, gas, and plastics-producing countries to abandon their desire to "see a moderately ambitious treaty." Dorothée Moisan, a French journalist specializing in environmental issues, notes that the plastics industry is closely linked to the oil, gas, and coal industries. With estimated revenues of around one trillion USD annually, plastics are the "lifeline" of the petrochemical industry.

Typically, a barrel of oil today can yield about 10% plastic, but in reality, technologies exist that allow for 40% or even 80% extraction. The profitability of plastics has led most manufacturers to want to continue the current trend, which is to steadily increase production each year, doubling from 2000 to 2019 and potentially tripling by 2060, regardless of the volume this will drown the planet in plastic waste.

If plastics production has to be scaled back, oil-exporting countries like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, or major plastics producers like China, will lose a significant source of revenue. Last March, Saudi Aramco announced a $3.6 billion investment to develop a massive petrochemical complex in China. At the end of 2022, the company also signed an $11 billion agreement with the French company TotalEnergies to develop a similar project in Saudi Arabia, which includes two plants to produce polyethylene, the world's most widely used plastic material.

According to Christophe Béchu, the average person on the planet currently uses 60 kg of plastic per year, and over the past 50 years, the world has discarded more than 7 billion tons of plastic. In 2019 alone, the world released 353 million tons of plastic waste, equivalent to 35,000 Eiffel Towers, and 81% of plastic products were discarded in less than a year. In the last 20 years, annual plastic production has more than doubled to 460 million tons, and at this rate, the volume of plastic will triple by 2060.

Plastics cause pollution throughout their entire life cycle, because as they "age," they break down into microplastics and nanoplastics. Plastics behave very differently from all other materials that humans use, because they cannot return to any biogeochemical cycles that help stabilize the Earth's ecosystem. All types of plastic, whether single-use or long-term, contribute to the increase in microplastics and nanoplastics, thus creating a ticking time bomb for future generations. This pollution bomb will explode if the world does not act strongly enough now.

According to VNA/News Agency

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