Scientists from nine universities worked together on a paper, focused on the need to reduce plastic production. | Poring Studio/Shutterstock
Scientists from universities in several countries released a paper that concluded production cuts must be part of the legally binding treaty to manage global plastic pollution if it’s to achieve its goals.
Scientists from the University of Copenhagen, University of California, Berkeley, University of Gothenburg, Sorbonne University, Toulouse University, ETH Zurich, Røskilde University, Versailles SQY University and the University of Exeter all worked on the peer-reviewed scientific paper “demonstrating the need for the treaty text to include mandatory plastic production cuts as an essential strategy to meaningfully reduce the existential threat of plastic pollution, the agreed mandate of the treaty negotiations,” a press release noted.
“Indisputable evidence shows that plastic production levels are not sustainable and must be reduced to protect people and the environment,” co-author Bethanie Carney Almroth of Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, said. “Including globally mandated obligations to reduce production in the plastics treaty can provide tools to achieve this goal.”
The next treaty meeting — International Negotiating Committee 5.2 — will be held at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Aug. 5-14. That INC meeting was set after member countries failed to reach consensus on a legally binding treaty to manage plastic pollution by the end of 2024, the deadline set for the group.
The paper comes after more than 90 countries on June 10 called for a renewed focus on a global plastics treaty during the United Nations Ocean Conference in France.
Tara Olsen, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen and lead author of the paper, said in the press release that “there is a growing body of literature stressing the importance of ensuring the global plastics treaty includes measures across the full life cycle of plastics and its products.”
“A crucial element of this policy mix is the need to address the growing rates of primary plastics production,” she added.
The paper, based on the available science, concluded that previous international environmental agreements proved that voluntary targets do not work.
“They must be legally binding, and each ratifying country must develop benchmarks to assess progress,” the paper noted.
In addition, global targets must translate to legally binding national targets for all states, based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, and progress toward all those targets must be assessed by an independent body of scientists.
The targets can be amended based on new scientific research, the paper specified, and “loopholes like plastic offsets have the same negative effect as carbon credits, undermining reduction efforts. Such policy instruments should thus not be included in the plastics treaty.”
Co-author Neil Tangri, of the University of California, Berkeley, added that “history shows that successful international environmental treaties are possible, as long as they have teeth.”
“We can learn from these past successes by enacting a plastics treaty with mandatory production cuts and national plans to achieve them,” he said, citing the Montreal Protocol – a 1987 global and universally ratified agreement regulating ozone-depleting products – as one example.
The most recent draft of the treaty text includes a binding plastics production reduction target, but nothing about binding national targets or any mechanism to assess progress.
“There is also no guarantee that a binding target will make it into the final text,” the press release noted.