Signs of growing confidence, as Ambassador Luis Vayas assumes control of Plastics Treaty negotiations in Ottawa
OTTAWA, 23 APRIL 2024: Admittedly, people of an optimistic mindset might have struggled to find their footing in the ongoing negotiations on a plastics treaty. The intergovernmental process, which kicked off with hugs and tears of joy at the UN Environment Assembly in March 2022 has, since then, been a crash course in disappointment management.
Throughout the process, the efforts of a growing majority of countries to build support for a strong treaty with binding obligations along the full life cycle of plastics have, again and again — and again — been thwarted by the spoiler tactics of a small group of oil and plastics producing countries.
Two years in, the progressive majority has proved unable to effectively counter the spoilers’ subversive machinations. Tears of joy have, over the past three rounds of negotiations, gradually been replaced by sighs of exhaustion.
But as the fourth round of negotiations kicks off in Ottawa on Tuesday 23 April, there are signs that this may just be about to change. Fed up with the procedural manoeuvrings of Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, countries serious about ending plastic pollution appear willing to press on, even if that means leaving the least ambitious countries behind.
After the previous round of talks in Nairobi ended with no plan for how to move the discussions forward, a group of countries launched, earlier this year, a series of informal consultations on a range of treaty provisions that the spoiler group had proposed for deletion. Importantly, the consultations have led to a series of attention-grabbing proposals specifying what global obligations to phase out problematic plastics products and plastic chemicals may look like.
In the same spirit of multilateral leadership, Steffi Lemke, the German environment minister, announced that her country were exploring the possibility of organising a ministerial-level conference together with Canada, Ecuador and Ghana ahead of the negotiations’ expected conclusion in December 2024. The announcement, made during a “Partnership Day” organised by Canada and WWF ahead of the meeting, suggested that there may be sufficient political interest in the plastics treaty process to overcome the paralysing culture of consensus in environmental diplomacy.
But perhaps most importantly, the new chair of the negotiations, Ambassador Luis Vayas Valdivieso of Ecuador, appears not only committed to preside over the meetings, but to display the courage and confidence required to lead the process to a successful conclusion. The Ambassador’s plan for the meeting, released on 4 April, demonstrates a clarity of vision and form of personal investment that have, in past treaty making processes, been crucial in resolving the conflicts that tend, inevitably, to emerge in multilateral negotiations.
As the fourth round of treaty negotiations kicks off in Ottawa, the question is not whether the spoiler countries will seek to disrupt the meeting. They will. On the eve of the opening plenary, there were rumours circulating in the corridors of the conference venue that the spoiler group had sent a letter to the chair threatening to block the negotiations if the committee’s disputed decision-making rule were to be invoked during the session.
Rather, the question is whether the progressive majority will call the spoilers’ bluff and move ahead anyway. An Ipsos survey released earlier this month showed that 85 percent of people around the world would like to see single-use plastics banned outright. The vast majority of the world’s countries are eager to respond to this call and conclude a treaty with global rules that will effectively remove high-risk products from the plastics value chain.
If the progressive majority can find a way to translate their numerical strength into political power, the Ottawa round of the plastics treaty negotiations may just prove to be a pivotal moment — not just for this negotiation process, but for multilateral environmental diplomacy more broadly.
Could this be the moment when the constructive forces in the international community begin to accept that the protection of the environment and human health, for current and future generations, cannot be achieved if the least ambitious are allowed to dictate the pace of progress?
