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Negotiators meet in less than a month to agree on the world’s first treaty to end plastic pollution, but countries remain so far apart that a deal may prove impossible.
It has been two years since the UN first agreed to work towards a treaty, and negotiators have met four times already to hammer out details.
But observers say progress on substance has been painfully slow — and at times actively stymied by countries keen to water down any final treaty.
That has left negotiators, and the diplomat chairing the process, scrambling to rescue the treaty and avoid emerging from talks in South Korea’s Busan with a weak one, or none at all.
The scale of the problem is undisputed.
Plastic production has doubled in 20 years and at current rates could triple by 2060, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Yet over 90 percent of plastic is not recycled, with much of it dumped in nature or buried in landfills.
As a result, microplastic has been found in the deepest ocean trenches, highest mountain peaks and just about every part of the human body.
But how to address this remains fiercely contested.
There are disagreements over whether to cap production, how to pay for better waste management, and even what process to use to adopt a treaty — a majority vote or consensus.
The talks are set to begin with a draft text that runs over 70 pages — which almost all parties agree is unworkable.
It contains “everything, and its contrary”, warned David Azoulay, director of the environmental health program at the Centre for International Environmental Law.
