Key Points

This will be the resumed fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5.2) to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment, in the next 10 days.

According to the United Nations, efforts are underway in Geneva to finalise a global plastics treaty, as the United Nations Environment Programme warns that plastic waste could triple by 2060 without urgent action. The talks aim to produce a legally binding treaty addressing threats to health, oceans and economies, it says.

The UNEP believes that unless an international accord is inked, plastic waste is projected to triple by 2060, causing significant damage -- including to human health.

India's approach is that, as developed countries have higher per capita generation of plastic waste and have historical responsibility, they need to provide financial and technical assistance by setting up a multilateral fund that provides incremental cost for transition to developing countries for meeting compliance obligations.

The UNEP-led talks follow a 2022 decision by member states to develop an international legally binding instrument to end the plastic pollution crisis, including in the world's seas, within two years.

In the run-up to the Geneva summit, medical journal The Lancet published a warning that the materials used in plastics cause extensive disease "at every stage of the plastics life cycle and every stage of human life".

According to more than two dozen health experts cited in the journal, infants and young children are particularly vulnerable. "Plastics are a grave, growing, and under-recognised danger to human and planetary health", and are responsible for health-related economic losses exceeding $1.5 trillion annually," it noted. Also, a group of over 60 leading scientists from around the world has issued an urgent call for governments to agree on ambitious, enforceable action to tackle plastic pollution, such as reducing plastic production and prioritising human health.

The letters, published on July 28 in the Cambridge University Press journal Cambridge Prisms: Plastics, in the run-up to the resumed session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5.2), warn that the plastics crisis has become a defining environmental, health, and social justice issue of "our time".

Leading the talks is Jyoti Mathur-Filipp, Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution, who says, "In 2024 alone, humanity was projected to consume over 500 million tonnes of plastic. Of this, 399 million tonnes will become waste."

Latest forecasts indicate that plastic leakage into the environment will grow by 50 per cent by 2040. "The cost of damages from plastic pollution could rise as high as a cumulative $281 trillion between 2016 and 2040," she said.

A day ahead of the final round of negotiations, hundreds of citizens and civil society organisations from across the world gathered at Place des Nations in Geneva to demand an ambitious and legally binding treaty that puts people and the planet before polluters. The demonstration, organised by Greenpeace Switzerland and the Break Free from Plastic movement, the Gallifrey Foundation and a growing coalition of environmental and social justice groups, with protesters donning yellow, red and orange to symbolise the urgency of the crisis and the danger posed by the unchecked production of plastic, which is overwhelmingly derived from fossil fuels.

"As host country of the negotiations on plastic pollution, we count on Switzerland to stay firm on the ambition of the future Global Treaty. With plastic production set to triple by 2050, the treaty would be bound to fail without a global target to reduce plastic production. We need to end the age of plastic to protect our health, our communities and our planet," said Joelle Herin, expert in consumption and circular economy at Greenpeace Switzerland.

The civil society is calling out the role of the fossil fuel industry in undermining progress and urging delegates to focus on upstream measures that tackle plastic production at its source.

"At the previous round of negotiations, we counted 221 lobbyists from the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries. If they had formed a single delegation, it would have been the largest at the talks, far outnumbering that of the European Union and its member states combined (191). This overwhelming presence shows just how threatened these industries are by a strong plastics treaty," said Laurianne Trimoulla, Communications and Project Manager of the Gallifrey Foundation.

Mageswari Sangaralingam from Sahabat Alam Malaysia said a strong global plastics treaty "isn't just about reducing pollution -- it's our opportunity to end the injustice of waste trade, ensuring that no community becomes a dumping ground for another's excess".

(Vishal Gulati can be contacted at vishal.g@ians.in)

- IANS