World Talks on a Treaty to Control Plastic Pollution Are Set for Nairobi in February. How To Do So Is Still Up in the Air.
By James Bruggers | December 25, 2021 | Inside Climate News
Governments are taking steps to rein in plastic waste.
But none of what’s been done so far has been up to the challenge of a growing plastics industry fed by consumer demand for more plastic products, resulting in a deepening global plastic waste crisis.
As a result, there is now an intensifying focus on the possibility of a global treaty to control plastic pollution.
The next milestone in a diplomatic process that began in 2014 could come in February, in Nairobi, Kenya, when the U.N. Environmental Assembly meets to decide if it will endorse the beginning of official negotiations over a plastics treaty.
Those efforts may have received a boost in late November, when Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the Biden administration would join the talks. Blinken, reversing a position from the Trump administration, said the U.S. goal is to “create a tool that we can use to protect our oceans and all of the life that they sustain from growing global harms of plastic pollution.”