Plastics treaty talks in deadlock as negotiations enter second week, India opposes product phase-out

Speaking for India, Vir Vikram Yadav, Chairman, Central Pollution Control Board said to the chair of the negotiations that the treaty’s focus should be on addressing plastic pollution only, and it should not overlap with existing multilateral environmental agreements and mandate bodies like WTO and WHO.

“Separate article on supply or any measure to regulate the production of primary plastic polymers has larger implications in respect of the right to development of member states. Such approaches should be avoided. Similarly, inclusion of any global list with phase out dates under the Article on plastic products should be avoided,” Yadav said, reading out India’s statement at the plenary.

The draft text of the treaty currently runs into 35 pages and contains nearly 1,500 brackets denoting the disagreements over the text and import of the language. This text is put together with the help of ‘contact groups’ which see representatives of countries discuss Articles of the treaty in detail.

Despite the vast gulf between country positions, Inder Andersen, Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said that the treaty “was within grasp”, and even as the negotiations were not easy, they could deliver.

In Busan too, India had backed production cuts, however, this time it has explicitly backed Arab countries, and taken a position on omitting any lists of products that should be phased out. This is significant as India has already passed domestic regulation to ban single-use plastic products such as balloon sticks, cutlery, straws, and certain packaging, which is of high littering potential.

Under Annex Y of the plastics treaty’s draft text, single use straws, cutlery, carry bags, rinse-off cosmetics, personal care products containing microbeads are some of the items included for phase-out. Yadav added that the treaty should have provisions on technical and financial assistance, including technology transfer, to developing countries to prevent and reduce plastic pollution. “…a stand-alone dedicated multilateral fund providing financial resources to developing countries for meeting costs for their compliance obligations is required,” Yadav said.

The Like-Minded countries India has aligned with have consistently opposed steps to cut plastic production, use of chemicals of concern in production in the treaty. Meanwhile, the European Union, Mexico, many African countries, Australia have pushed for “high ambition”, such as including production cuts and addressing the entire life-cycle of plastic production rather than focussing on plastic waste management.

Kuwait’s representative said during the stocktake that countries must agree on what can be agreed upon and consensus must be the foundation of the treaty. “There will be no successful treaty without half of the world’s population…any attempt to move forward without consensus risks producing an instrument which is neither legitimate nor implementable.”

The formal deadline to achieve a global treaty, akin to the Paris climate treaty, ended in failure in Busan, Korea, last December. However, talks have carried on after it was decided to resume where things stalled in Busan.