PLASTIC POLLUTION AND PLASTIC WASTE PACT

After a fortnight of talks participated by almost all nations on the planet, there emerged an almost unanimous voice to take concrete action to track, monitor and mitigate plastic wastes that had cluttered landfills, rivers, tributaries, creeks, canals, lakes, seas and oceans. U.S. remained the only holdout on May 10, 2019 in the 186-nation U.N.-supported Basel Convention. 

****** PLASTIC POLLUTION CONFERENCE (NOVEMBER 28 - DECEMBER 2, 2022) ****

First of Five Conferences Held in Uruguay 

United Nations Environment Programme convened its first series of five conferences on the world's plastic waste from November 28, 2022 to December 2, 2022 at the Pacific Coast city of Punta del Este of Uruguay. Representatives from more than 160 governments, chemical industries, climate groups and civic organizations met over the five days to discuss and debate on various options to curtail plastic waste from our oceans, seas and rivers. Industry groups want to settle on a voluntary global agreement to mitigate the problem of plastic waste. Environmental groups prefer a more hands-down, pro-active binding agreement with measurable goals and specific targets. No concrete agreement or even compromising point of convergence was found in the first round of talks.  

****** PLASTIC POLLUTION CONFERENCE (NOVEMBER 28 - DECEMBER 2, 2022) ****

Kenya Talks on Plastic Pollution Falls Short in Outcome

The second session of Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for Plastics, or INC-2, took place at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris from May 29, 2023 to June 2, 2023. The INC-3, or the third session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for Plastics, was held in Nairobi between November 13, 2023 and November 19, 2023. There was high expectation that negotiators will arrive some form of consensus on the broad framework of an agreement before the fourth of the five rounds of negotiation. Instead, the draft got longer as member states added their own proposals. The fissure was apparent too in the negotiating sessions. A more pro-active intervention group led by Norway and Rwanda stressed on an international binding treaty to cut down the imprimatur of plastics throughout its entire lifecycle and reduce certain chemicals as part of its eradication by 2040. The other group, mostly led by the oil-producing nations, wants to shift the focus away from mandates to voluntary adherence and from managing the entire lifecycle of plastics to waste management. 

PLASTIC POLLUTION

Study Identifies Largest Plastic Polluters

Every year our planet is burdened by plastic waste as a result of 400 million metric tons of plastic produced by large corporations as well as by small firms. Many of these plastic waste fill our landfills, swirl in ocean currents, or break up into microplastics that are inhaled by humans, thus creating adverse health outcomes. It's also often difficult, if not impossible, to identify who are behind this massive plastic pollution. That's going to change with an expansive study published on April 24, 2024 in the Science Advances. The study backed by the group Break Free From Plastic involved more than 100,000 volunteers across the globe. The study is based on 1,576 audits from more than 1.8 million pieces of plastic between 2018 and 2022. Out of more than 1.8 million pieces of plastic, circa 910,000 samples did have clear brand names. Based on the findings, researchers concluded that 56 firms contribute more than 50% of plastic waste. The biggest culprit is Coca-Cola Company, with a whopping 11% share. Coca-Cola is pursuing an ambitious plastic-free strategy, formally known as World Without Waste strategy, that calls for converting into 100% recyclable packaging by the end of 2025 and reusing recycled material in at least 50% of the packaging. Other large polluters are Nestle, Pepsi and Danone. 

BIODIVERSITY

First Comprehensive Biodiversity Report

Scientists on May 6, 2019 said that human activities are putting enormous pressure in the nature's ecosystem, leading to possible extinction of more than a million plant and animal species. However, there is still time to restore a more biodiverse planetary equilibrium if there is concerted and coordinated effort to fight against what "we have reconfigured dramatically life on the planet". The more than 1000-page report was compiled by Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) based on research of more than 15,000 scientific and government reports by more than 450 researchers. The report had to be approved by all 109 nations. The report also called for simultaneous work on fighting climate change and sustaining species. 

************* U.N. BIODIVERSITY CONFERENCE AT MONTREAL (COP15)*************

Landmark Agreement Reached in 2022 Montreal Biodiversity Conference

The U.N. Biodiversity Conference, or COP15, was held at Montreal, Canada from December 7, 2022 to December 19, 2022. The conference had lofty goals to begin with, but descended in so called economic divide and fault zones that had affected so many environmental conferences before. African nations were passionate in raising their demand for fair share and creating a Biodiversity fund to help out the poor nations. One sticking point was about creating a new fund for Biodiversity. However, developed countries focused on creating a fund under the existing Global Environmental Facility. At last, African nations agreed to a new fund as part of GEF. French Ecological Transition Minister Christophe Bechu said that creating a "fund under the GEF is the best way to obtain something immediate and efficient". China, which holds the presidency in the conference, has unveiled an agreement framework on December 18, 2022. Chinese Environment Minister Huang Runqui said that "we have in our hands a package" that might "halt and reverse biodiversity loss and put biodiversity on the path to recovery", to the rapturous applause of the officials. The key provision of the deal, agreed in the wee hours of December 19, 2022, is 30-by-30, implying 30% of terrestrial and marine areas are to be brought under the purview of protection clause of the deal by 2030. At present, only 17% of the terrestrial and 10% marine areas are under the protective cover. The deal also calls for raising $200 billion by 2030 for Biodiversity. It [agreement] will commit $20 billion per year to poor nations for Biodiversity by 2025 and increase that to $30 billion per year by 2030. France's Christophe Bechu lauded the deal because it would strive for "very precise and quantified objectives on pesticides, on reduction of loss of species, on eliminating bad subsidies". 

************* U.N. BIODIVERSITY CONFERENCE AT MONTREAL (COP15)*************

********** U.N. BIODIVERSITY CONFERENCE  (COP16) AT CALI, COLOMBIA *********

Global Biodiversity Conference Begins to Pursue 23 Measures Agreed Two Years Ago

Environmental leaders and policymakers launched the COP16, or the current round of the Biodiversity Conference, at Cali, Colombia on October 21, 2024 to put in place a workable mechanism, or at least a plan for it, to push forward with 23 measures, including preserving 30% of the planet and 30% of the degraded ecosystems under a protection plan by 2030. They are some of the follow-up action plans from the 2022 COP15 conference at Montreal, where 196 nations have participated, that the leaders in this conference are to undertake with a concrete set of plans. 

Key Decisions Made as COP16 Draws to an End

The two-week Conference of Parties 16, or COP16, conference in Cali came to a conclusion on November 2, 2024 with some modest, but significant, achievements. Main among them is a proposal to form a "subsidiary" body that will include indigenous people to make decisions on biodiversity. This proposal is a significant victory for indigenous rights and say in issues related to biodiversity. Another important achievement is to agree on obliging biotechnology firms benefitting from rainforests and assets from other indigenous regions for producing invaluable medication and therapies that bring hefty revenues for the firms to share 0.1% of revenue with the source communities. The revenue sharing model, formally known as "Genetic Information Fee" model, will reinvest money in the development of many impoverished regions where the biotech firms source their product from. 

********** U.N. BIODIVERSITY CONFERENCE  (COP16) AT CALI, COLOMBIA *********