(2023-05-18) Developing Country Voices Will Be Excluded At Un Plastic Talks Say Ngos

Developing country voices will be excluded at UN plastic talks, say NGOs. Scientists and NGOs have accused the UN’s environment programme (Unep) of locking out those “most needing to be heard” from upcoming negotiations in Paris aimed at halting plastic waste.

The groups criticised the agency for publishing a report this week, before negotiations between 193 countries over 29 May to 2 June, which they claimed did not fully reflect the health and environmental effects of plastic pollution. The report said mismanaged plastic waste could be slashed by 80% by 2040.

Scientists’s Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty (Scept), representing 200 scientists who were invited to comment before the report’s publication, said their concerns and criticisms were ignored

Unep said it regretted that “due to a technical issue” an email containing Scept comments was not received in time for publication.

*Therese Karlsson, a science adviser at International Pollutants Elimination Network and member of Scept, said: “We were asked to review the report. Thirty scientists provided over 300 comments. We have several major concerns, one around the framing of the report, which is very focused on technological solutions in a very optimistic way, even although those technical solutions are not proven.”

“This creates a narrative that makes is easy to think we can fix our way out of this. But we need to talk about chemicals from plastics and decrease the use of plastics.” One concern, she said, was the inclusion of chemical recycling, which was “not recognised as environmentally sound management” under the Basel convention, as a possible interim solution.*

Andrés Del Castillo, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, said: “The headline figure of the Unep report predicts an 80% reduction of plastics pollution with the proposed ‘new plastics economy’. This number does not represent a reduction, but rather a narrowing of the scope and definition of what is considered plastic pollution from a full life cycle perspective.”

NGOs have expressed concern over the report’s inclusion of burning plastic waste in cement kilns as one of several strategies to address the plastics crisis.