The chances for a stronger international agreement on limits to plastic production may have increased dramatically as the world nears a U.N. deadline for achieving a plastics treaty. The game changer: The United States, one of the world’s largest producers of plastics, has shifted its position to recognize the need to control the entire life cycle of plastics, whereas previously it had advocated for a nonbinding treaty emphasizing mainly recycling and reuse. The U.N. Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution is scheduled to conduct its fifth and possibly final session (dubbed INC-5) this month, when it faces a self-imposed deadline to hammer out an internationally binding agreement, with the treaty language then going to the world’s nations for ratification. It’s possible, however, that if agreement isn’t reached, the process could run into next year. Since the world began treaty negotiations in 2022, the U.N. meetings have been buffeted by widely diverging viewpoints. Large plastic-producing nations, such as the U.S., China, Russia, India and Saudi Arabia, have opposed efforts to limit or control production, whereas a self-named High Ambition Coalition (HAC) of 67 nations has fought to highly regulate it. Among coalition members are coastal and island nations on the receiving end of ocean-carried plastic waste. The U.S. has so far taken no known steps to join the HAC. Between the INC’s fourth session, which took place in Ottawa in April, and the fifth session slated for Nov. 25-Dec. 1 in Busan, South Korea, the United States modified…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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