Geneva to host international talks on plastic pollution

Plastic pollution: new international negotiations in August Keystone-SDA

A further round of negotiations to reach an international treaty to reduce global plastic pollution will take place in Geneva from August 5-14. Greenpeace is calling on Switzerland to make a firm commitment to an ambitious agreement.

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The previous negotiating session, tasked with drawing up “an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment”, ended on December 1 in Busan, South Korea, without agreement.

The resumption of discussions on plastic pollution comes on the heels of an agreement on financing nature conservation at the UN’s COP16 biodiversity conference in Rome on Thursday.

Oil producers

The second part of the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC-5.2) will be held at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, the UN environment organisation UNEP said on its website.

+ Switzerland has plastic problem, say most Swiss

The fifth session of talks in Busan between representatives of over 170 countries stalled in December. A bloc of mainly oil-producing countries, including Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran, are opposed to any limits on global polymer production to combat the pollution that is invading oceans, rivers and even the human body.

In the United States, since the failure of these discussions, President Donald Trump, a climate sceptic, has clearly announced that he wants a “return to plastic” and has also promised to boost hydrocarbon exploitation.

+ Why don’t the Swiss recycle more plastic?

For binding targets

For Greenpeace, the mission of the member states, and Switzerland in particular, is clear: break the influence of the fossil fuel industry to reach an effective agreement with binding targets for reducing plastic production.

“They must commit to eliminating hazardous chemicals, banning single-use plastics, setting re-use targets and defining a fair financing plan,” said Joëlle Hérin, an expert with the environmental organisation. Negotiations must take place with the communities most affected by plastic pollution.

Translated from French by DeepL/ts

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