Spoiler group forced to retreat in Plastics Treaty negotiations, as proposal to ban problematic plastic products takes centre stage in Ottawa
OTTAWA, 27 APRIL 2024: Something felt subtly different when Ambassador Luis Vayas called the fourth session of the plastics treaty negotiations to order on Tuesday this week. It is difficult to pin-point exactly why, but compared to the preceding three sessions, the fourth round of talks in Ottawa has been marked by a growing sense of control and confidence.
Attempts by a group of spoiler countries to challenge the Ecuadorian ambassador’s plan for the session were, in the opening plenary, quickly neutralized by statements of support from all regional groups, forcing the spoiler group to back down.
Since the chair’s proposal “seems to be endorsed by everyone”, Kuwait said, in a rare concession, “we will just accept it”.
Surprisingly conciliatory, considering the group’s stubborn propensity.
Encouragingly, Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, had left her dictionary of flowery terms back in Nairobi. In her opening statement, she presented an uncharacteristically sober assessment of the sticking points and points of alignment in the negotiations.
“I recognize that there are different proposals on the table”, she said, in response to the contested proposal that the plastics treaty regulate plastic chemicals and polymers of concern. “In my view, a fine needle can be threaded that ensures that we land with a credible and implementable passway on this critical matter”.
There is a scene in the Danish TV series Borgen, where Birgitte Nyborg, the fictional no-nonsense politician, calls the members of her newly established political party to order: “We’ve been high on the feeling of being a mass movement”, she says in response to the many “dreams”, “opinions”, “hopes” and “illusions” articulated in the party’s first policy-making exercise. “Now it’s time to slim it down and set its course”.
Perhaps inspired by her imaginary compatriot, Andersen’s level-headed speech to the troubled committee on Tuesday suggested that the time of wild dreams and illusions is coming to an end also in the plastics treaty negotiations.
Moreover, as the committee, on Monday afternoon, split into “contact groups” to discuss the bewildering number of text options, sub-options and alternatives in the revised draft text, it quickly became clear that the chair’s plan to get the negotiators to knead the document into a more workable text would pan out.
“Herding cats” is an idiom too weak to describe the task assigned to the fourteen “co-chairs” and “co-facilitators” selected to lead the text negotiations. Yet, the fourteen appointees have, over the past three days, managed to cut nearly half of the text options that had been compiled in Nairobi out of the revised text.
When negotiators reconvened in plenary on Friday night, Ambassador Vayas effectively quenched a potential flare-up over the number of meetings the committee should be able to hold simultaneously. The assertive handling bolstered his authority and weakened Iran — whose representative had made insinuations about a breakdown in “trust between countries and the chairmanship”.
But more importantly for the future of the process, there are signs that negotiators are, finally, zeroing in on what will likely become the heart of the new treaty.
A proposal to ban problematic plastic products has sparked significant interest and debate within and outside the conference rooms of the bowl-shaped Shaw Center in Ottawa, with countries submitting lists of products that should, in their view, be scheduled for global phase-out.
Which plastic products should be banned under the new treaty — and why? Which products need to be exempted for medical and other reasons? And what kinds of requirements are needed to ensure that the products that cannot be banned or phased out do not end up as pollution in the environment?
The answers to these questions have the potential to fundamentally change our relationship with plastics. Given the broad support for global rules to ban a wide range of products, many of the single-use plastic items that we have become all too accustomed to, will likely disappear. This is bad news for the plastics industry — but excellent news for the environment.
The big question, as the fourth session of the plastics treaty negotiations enters its final days, is whether the countries promoting the product bans will be able to carry out the diplomatic legwork required to get a critical mass of states behind their proposal — or whether they will allow themselves to be distracted by the predictable procedural shenanigans of the group of spoiler countries.
While the Ottawa round has, four days in, been a relatively smooth affair, it is clear that the deep political and procedural challenges that have marred the process since the beginning are still, largely, unresolved. The committee may have succeeded in “streamlining”, “merging” and “realigning” the many options in the revised draft text. But there is still no agreement on the essential features of the new treaty.
If anything, positions are becoming more entrenched, with an increasingly self-confident majority of countries advocating a treaty with product bans and other rules along “the full life cycle” of plastics, and a small minority of oil and plastics producing countries continuing to call for the treaty to be nothing more than a voluntary policy framework.
The political chasm would have been less of a concern had the committee had an effective way to make decisions. But in response to a request made by India on Tuesday, Ambassador Vayas all but crossed out the committee’s contested decision-making rule, leaving all countries with a de facto right to veto any outcome.
The committee’s complicated relationship with decision-making is expected to resurface as negotiators move to consider the outcomes of the session. With less than eight months to go before the foreseen conclusion of the new treaty, the committee desperately needs a plan for how to move the process forward in the lead-up to the final round of negotiations in Busan.
After Russia and Saudi Arabia blocked agreement on a programme for intersessional work at the committee’s previous session in Nairobi, many are worried that the Ottawa round will suffer the same fate. Given the intransigence they have displayed in the past, it may be difficult to see how the oil and plastic producing countries “will just accept” to take part in intersessional work on treaty provisions they have objected to.
At the same time, the group may not be entirely insensitive to where the winds are blowing. Indeed, the fourth round of the plastics treaty negotiations have shown that even in the paralysing world of consensus, an assertive majority can still tip the scales—if they know what they want and have the wherewithal to pursue it.
