Posted on November, 28 2024

The Chair’s version will form the basis for what will eventually be gabled through as the final treaty this Sunday when the talks are expected to close. Negotiators and civil society groups gathered in Busan were expecting this revised text to come out only on Saturday.

“After days of complaints of agonisingly slow and unproductive discussions in Contact Groups, the Chair is responding to the frustration shown at yesterday’s plenary session where many negotiators made impassioned pleas that they needed to just get on with business in the face of ongoing delaying from spoiler states. And the business at hand is making sure that we leave Busan with a strong treaty that does not compromise on establishing global and binding rules across plastics’ entire lifecycle,” said Eirik Lindebjerg, Global Plastics Pollution Lead, WWF.

“With less than 24 hours to ensure all core measures are included in the Chair’s text, we urge negotiators to use today’s Contact Groups to push through robust and ambitious measures that are backed by science, and which we need to end plastic pollution. The majority of countries know what these are, and they have already professed their support for such measures - what we want to see from them now is the courage to see their ambition through.”

WWF calls on governments to secure at INC-5 a treaty that includes four essential binding global measures across the entire plastic lifecycle:

1. Global bans and phase outs of the most harmful and problematic plastic products and chemicals;
2. Global product design requirements to ensure all plastic we continue to produce is safe to reuse and recycle as part of a global non-toxic circular economy;
3. Aligning financial flows and resources to support nations in a just transition;
4. Future-proofing the treaty through mechanisms that guarantee strengthening over time.

WWF urges governments to reject any attempts at watering down or excluding core measures that must be included in the treaty. Should disputes arise or if a treaty borne out of consensus yields weak measures, governments must be willing to vote to get the treaty that we need.

According to WWF’s Global Plastic Navigator, an interactive platform tracking governments’ positions on various treaty measures:

1. 146 countries have called for or supported global bans and phase-outs of problematic and avoidable plastic products and chemicals of concern;
2. 147 countries have called for or supported global product design requirements and systems for the transition toward a non-toxic circular economy;
3. 167 countries have called for or supported implementation support mechanisms;
4. 102 countries have called for or supported evidence-based mechanisms that can strengthen the treaty over time.

ENDS

For further information, please contact news@wwfint.org.
If you would like to receive our daily update on INC-5, please sign up here or contact Fawziah (fselamat@wwfint.org).

Day 0 update is here. Day 1 update is here. Day 2 update is here. Day 3 update is here.