Plastic pollution | Canada remains optimistic that a treaty will be concluded by 2025

(Ottawa) Canada is optimistic about the conclusion of a possible treaty to eliminate plastic pollution by 2040. The government believes that the fourth session of United Nations (UN) negotiations on the issue will have helped lay the foundations for the next round scheduled for November in South Korea. However, uncertainty regarding a possible limit on plastic production still remains.

“We’re not going to finish these parts of the treaty here because that’s not really the goal today in Ottawa, but we’re at the point where we’re looking at the entire life cycle of plastics,” said the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of the Environment, Julie Dabrusin, Monday afternoon.

She affirmed that Canada was in agreement with a proposal from Rwanda so that the addition of a target for reducing plastic production in the treaty would be the subject of negotiations during an intermediate session between that of Ottawa and Busan, South Korea. This proposal, supported by Peru, calls for a 40% reduction in production by 2040.

“We support their proposal so that we can discuss it,” she said without indicating whether Canada would be in agreement with such a target.

The question of imposing a ceiling on plastic production did not reach consensus among the 175 participating countries on Monday and by the admission of the Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault, it will be difficult to achieve.

Some 460 million tonnes of plastic are produced each year on the planet, a quantity that is expected to triple by 2060, according to the UN Environment Program (UNEP). Discarded plastic and microplastics end up in the environment, particularly in the oceans.

Canada hoped to reduce the text of the draft treaty by 70% so that the countries could reach an agreement by the end of the year. It went from 32 to 77 pages during the previous round of negotiations in Nairobi, Kenya. M^me Dabrusin was unable to say whether that goal was achieved in Ottawa, but she said passages were cleared every day.

Uncertainty

Late Monday afternoon, uncertainty still surrounded the progress of the last plenary scheduled for the evening. However, a consensus seemed to emerge on Monday on the holding of an intermediate negotiating session before the final conference scheduled for November in Busan, South Korea.

When negotiations launched a week earlier, Canada hoped to get closer to a binding international treaty.

“We see some progress emerging, but there are a lot of uncertainties and the central issue, which is the reduction of plastic production, currently remains highly uncertain,” commented Greenpeace Canada spokesperson Patrick Bonin.

The organization wants negotiations in Ottawa to lead to “a legally binding objective of reducing plastic production” by at least 75% by 2040.

Minister Guilbeault acknowledged in an interview with The Canadian Press on Friday that it will be difficult to obtain a cap on plastic production during these negotiations, even if Canada is not opposed to it.

“I don’t think we have done enough work collectively to be able to achieve this,” he said. “I don’t know how we could implement something like that. »

Countries including Saudi Arabia and other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oppose more ambitious measures.

Canada is focusing more on banning single-use plastics and the circular economy, which consists of producing goods with fewer resources, then reusing, repairing and recycling them to reduce waste production. In Canada, as elsewhere in the world, only 9% of the 4 million tonnes of plastic waste were recycled in 2019, according to the Federal Ministry of the Environment and UNEP.

Mr. Guilbeault was in Turin, Italy, on Monday for the meeting of G7 ministers responsible for climate, energy and the environment. The G7 is set to commit to reducing plastic production to end this pollution by 2040 in its final communiqué on Tuesday. The Group of Seven industrialized countries includes Italy, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Activists from countries in the South warned on Monday against the concept of circular economy which is put forward by the industry and which will not solve the problem of plastic pollution, according to them. Dorothy Otieno, from the Center for Environmental Justice and Development in Kenya, recalled that they want to obtain a fund to enable them to manage the plastic pollution sent to them from the North.

With The Canadian Press and Agence France-Presse