Talks over a global UN pact to tackle plastic pollution will restart at a later date after bitter divisions stopped governments reaching an agreement at what was due to be the final round of negotiations in the South Korean city of Busan.
Despite proceedings going into overtime in the early hours of Monday, diplomats failed to break a stalemate over core issues under consideration for the treaty, including reductions in plastic production.
More than 100 developed and developing countries strongly pushed for measures to cap plastic manufacturing, but a handful of oil and gas-producing states – vocally led by Saudi Arabia, Russia, Kuwait and Iran – stonewalled their efforts, arguing the pact should only address consumption and recycling.
Negotiators failed to find common ground during the week-long discussions – and following numerous missed deadlines, the chair of the talks, Luis Vayas Valdivieso, released a new draft treaty text mid-afternoon on Sunday, the final day. But the document was littered with opposing options and hundreds of brackets around all contentious issues.
It looked unlikely to chart a path to an agreement in the handful of hours left on the schedule.
Production curbs needed for strong global pact on plastic pollution, campaigners say
Ultimately, countries decided to buy more time and suspend the session with a view to resume it – likely at some point next year.
“We have made significant progress in Busan – however, our work is far from complete,” said a bleary-eyed Vayas Valdivieso as he opened the closing plenary.
“Unresolved issues remain challenging and additional time will be needed to address them effectively. There is a general agreement to resume the current session at a later date to conclude our negotiations,” he added.
Interventions from country delegations laid bare, once again, the deep divisions standing in the way of an accord.
Applause for high ambition
Members of the so-called High Ambition Coalition (HAC) seized the opportunity to put on a public display of the widespread support for their treaty proposals, including the inclusion of a “global target” to reduce plastic production to “sustainable levels”.
Juliet Kabera from Rwanda, co-chair of the HAC, said the 85 countries in the coalition voiced their “strong concerns about ongoing calls by a small minority group of countries to remove binding provisions from the text that are indispensable for the treaty to be effective”.
After listing those key elements, she concluded by asking everyone who backed the statement to “stand for ambition”. The overwhelming majority of delegates present in the room rose to their feet and broke into a long round of applause punctuated by loud cheers.
After Rwanda’s statement called on all those supporting an ambitious treaty to stand, the plenary erupted in support at INC-5 in Busan, South Korea, December 1, 2024. (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth)
Moments later, Camila Zepeda of Mexico began her intervention by reading out the names of the nearly 100 countries behind a ‘legally-binding” provision to “phase out” the most harmful plastic products and chemicals of concern used in their production.
Both Kabera’s and Zepeda’s statements were supported by many developing countries across Africa, Latin America and the Pacific and nearly all rich nations, with the notable exception of the United States.
Speaking for the European Union, Hugo Schally said the bloc was “disappointed” with the talks’ outcome, but felt “encouraged and empowered by a growing number of countries sharing the same ambitions”.
Saudis: Problem is pollution not plastic
Countries opposed to manufacturing curbs hit back. Saudi Arabia’s Abdulrahman Al Gwaiz complained about certain provisions, including production caps, that “continue to make it despite our continued insistence that they are not within the scope”.
“If you address plastic pollution, there should be no problem with producing plastic. The problem is the pollution, not the plastic,” he added.
Russia’s delegate spoke of “production regulation models” being imposed “purely for economic reasons”.
India’s negotiator said “we cannot deny the importance plastic plays in the development of society”, adding that the treaty needs to strike a “critical balance”.
Nearly all plastic is derived from fossil fuels – and many countries and companies see the petrochemicals sector as a lifeline, with demand for oil and gas in the energy sector projected to decline as the world shifts to cleaner sources.
Plastic production has been rising at an unrelenting pace over the last few decades and, according to some projections, could double or triple by 2050. A surge in production is expected to have a significant impact on the greenhouse gas emissions exacerbating the climate crisis.
Plastic production could consume around a quarter of the carbon budget remaining if global warming is to be limited to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, according to a study by the US-based Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Industry “capture”
Christina Dixon, ocean campaign lead at the Environmental Investigation Agency, said the negotiations had been “captured by plastic and petrochemical industries and their aligned countries, who have no intention to address plastic pollution or let others do so”.
But she added that the high-ambition coalition would “continue to fight in solidarity with those seeking real solutions to end the harms of plastic pollution”.
Graham Forbes, Greenpeace’s head of delegation in Busan, said “this delay comes with dire consequences” for the frontline communities affected by the plastic pollution crisis. “The ambitious majority must break through fossil fuel influence and the obstruction of a few to deliver an effective agreement,” he added.
Some negotiators and observers told Climate Home that China would need to play a decisive role in bridging the divide with the petrostates, if the world is to stand a chance of clinching an ambitious deal. Beijing gave a nod in that direction during the closing plenary.
Vice Minister Guo Fang said all countries should “propose more pragmatic and balanced solutions” that address the “entire life-cycle” of plastics, while taking into account national differences.
(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; editing by Megan Rowling)
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After witnessing the effects of sea-level rise in the low-lying island nation of Tuvalu, Pacific leaders on Tuesday used the pre-COP31 summit in Fiji to voice their frustration at the difficulties they have experienced in tapping the global climate finance system.
A small group of government leaders, climate negotiators and heads of development banks and climate funds took a trip to Tuvalu’s Funafuti atoll on Tuesday morning, travelling by road over land just 10-20 metres wide to visit a project that is building barriers to keep the sea from the land.
They then flew to Fiji for the pre-COP summit, where several Pacific leaders said they had been let down by the insufficient quantity, bad terms and slow speed of international finance to help them adapt to a warming climate that is bringing higher oceans, drought and more powerful storms to their shores.
“Right now, our islands are like a canoe that has been rammed by a massive foreign ship. Our canoe is taking on water, we are sinking, and what is the world’s response?” asked Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr.
“They hand us a tiny patch to cover a gaping hole,” he continued, “but the bureaucratic process just to receive that patch is so slow that the water fills the hole while we wait. Then to rebuild the vessel so that we can survive the next storm, we are offered loans, debt that adds weight to a sinking boat packaged in red tape so thick we can barely access it. And while we wait, the water continues to fill.”
Pacific leaders and Australia called again on governments to invest in the new Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF), which has been designed by the Pacific Islands Forum and is seeking $500 million in investments by COP31 in November.
It has around $180 million so far, but did not receive additional pledges during the UN General Assembly in New York. The PRF aims to invest to generate annual returns which it can give to projects like water tanks for drought-hit communities.
Witnessing sea level rise
The annual pre-COP gathering is usually a low-profile technical meeting of climate negotiators. But this year, Australia – which is the president of negotiations at COP31 – partnered with the Pacific to introduce a “leaders segment” in an attempt to shine a spotlight on climate issues affecting the region.
Fourteen government leaders – from Australia, Timor-Leste, Mauritius and the Pacific – made the trip. They were joined by the European Union’s climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, the heads of the Green Climate Fund and the Asian Development Bank and former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard.
On their return to Fiji, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale told the pre-COP leaders roundtable that the sea level rise they had witnessed was personal for him.
“Tuvalu was not just a site visit for me. I saw the story of my own saltwater people,” he said, adding that he, his daughter and his grandfather had lost their houses to sea level rise and that three-quarters of his electorate live on land that will be underwater in the next 30 years.
From the other side of the world, Antigua and Barbuda’s environment minister Michael Joseph said Tuvalu’s problems felt similar to those of his own Caribbean islands. “I saw vulnerable communities… just metres from the sea and people determined to remain on their land, preserve their culture and way of life,” he said.
A group of Fijian schoolchildren told the leaders it was not just sea level rise the Pacific struggles with but also heatwaves, droughts and storms, which worry their families and prevent them from learning.
Climate finance red-tape
Several Pacific leaders criticised the world’s leaders for not doing enough to combat climate change. Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown expressed disappointment that only two non-Pacific leaders had come to the pre-COP, a fact Australian media widely picked up on to label the event a flop and question its A$20 million (US$14m) price tag.
“We’ve heard a lot of numbers these last two days,” Brown said. “Let me share one of my own. More than 50 invitations extended to world leaders… to see for themselves what high emissions are doing to our nations and our ocean – an ocean that covers nearly one-third of the Earth’s surface.”
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He called for more climate finance for the Pacific, asking “if the world is prepared to assess our suitability for climate finance, why is it not equally prepared to scrutinise whether those responsible for delivering it are meeting their obligations?”
Like Palau’s president Whipps, Naoero’s President David Adeang criticised the red tape that is hindering access to climate finance as well as a lack of money, complaining especially about “complicated procedures, heavy reporting, delays in approval and disbursement”.
Adeang added that “the way we assess vulnerability matters”, adding that it should be measured by more than income. Naoero, for example, is classified by the World Bank as high-income, restricting which climate finance it is eligible for.
Action plan to improve access
On Thursday, the Australian government will present a statement and action plan on improving access to climate finance for small island developing states and least developed countries, which it is asking other countries and organisations to endorse.
The statement addresses some of these Pacific complaints as well as acknowledging that progress has already been made on simplifying access by multilateral development banks and climate funds.
In Fiji, Asian Development Bank head Masato Kanda said his institution is “tailoring our finance and operations to island realities” because “your children and their children should be able to grow old in the countries their ancestors have called home for millennia”.
The executive director of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), Mafalda Duarte, said that the GCF-backed coastal adaptation project leaders visited in Tuvalu shows that “climate finance works” although – as the project took eight years to implement – “it takes time, and therefore we have no time to waste”.
Australia calls for optimism
While Pacific leaders expressed concern that the world is set to blast past its agreed 1.5C warming limit, endangering their nations, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called for “optimism”. “If people think there is no hope, then they will not strive to get the change that we need,” he said.
He said that when he attended his first COP in 2005, Australia’s renewable energy target was 2%. Its target is now 82% renewable electricity by 2030.
While Albanese promoted Australia’s success at electrifying homes and businesses and rolling out renewables, he has been criticised by climate campaigners for extending the production of fossil fuels, including coal – largely for export.
France’s Minister for Ecological Transition Monique Barbut defended the European Union’s climate action at the pre-COP meeting. She said the continent was heating up and reducing emissions faster and providing more climate finance than anywhere else in the world.
“It is time for all major emitters to step up and do their fair share” on climate finance, she said. Most developing countries with large emissions have fiercely resisted joining the club of climate finance donors, arguing they have played a disproportionately small historic role in causing climate change.
Barbut, as well as Palau’s president Whipps, called for the next flagship scientific assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to be finished by COP33 in 2028, in time to inform the next global stocktake of national climate action.
This timeline has been opposed by countries like India, Saudi Arabia and China, who argue it would put an unfair burden on developing countries. Barbut said countries should “support the work of the IPCC rather than sabotage its calendar”.
Barbut said that governments should agree at COP31 to aim to raise the share of “clean electricity” in final energy consumption to 35% by 2035. The Turkish and Australian governments have pushed for this goal although without specifying that the electricity should be “clean”. Barbut added that COP31 should also agree to cut emissions of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.
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Pacific leaders rail at climate finance failures after pre-COP trip to Tuvalu
Jacynta Fa’amau is a Pacific campaigner at global grassroots climate movement 350.org and a secretariat member of Pacific Climate Warriors.
The first thing that struck me was the sheer size of Queensland’s Saraji coal mine. Standing at the edge of the enormous pit, my brain scrambled for words as I scanned the earth’s open wound – a whole island could probably fit inside it.
Looking down, I noticed footprints of an emu and a koala, pressed and dried in what was once a puddle – signs of how drought had driven animals in desperate search of water, so dangerously close to the coal trucks and heavy machinery ahead.
Earlier this year, I joined a small group of Pacific Islanders on a journey through the Bowen Basin to learn from First Nations communities battling Australia’s mammoth coal industry. Of the more than 40 coal mines operating in the area, BHP & Mitsubishi Alliance’s Saraji mine is one of the largest. So it came as a painful shock to us when in August, the Australian government approved the mine’s extension just months after our visit.
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Witnessing coal extraction is devastating. It is bad enough to see what pillaging tonnes of coal can do to a mine’s immediate surroundings: dry creek beds, dwindling wildlife, denuded land. But to know that this coal will be shipped across the ocean, bring air pollution, and eventually lead to the destruction of Pacific islands thousands of miles away is another kind of heartbreak.
Rising ocean waters
I’m an Australian-born Samoan. In 2002, I visited my family home for the first time. My father took me to the rural community where generations of my family were raised. He did not have the words to describe how much has changed since rising ocean waters had taken away almost a third of the beach.
I learned of how we had to relocate my great‑great‑grandparents’ grave to higher ground twice in the last 15 years. Of how my cousins have to paddle out further to sea to catch fish, since warmer waters have destroyed much of the reef. Of how the ocean crashes so close to my uncle’s home that he had to build a new house further away.
We saw reflections of our own climate destruction in the Pacific when we shared these stories with our First Nations relatives at the edge of the Saraji mine. Murrawah Johnson and Teila Watson, both Birri Gubba and Gangulu women, made clear connections between their struggles and ours. “We don’t get to inherit our land and we don’t get to inherit our traditional roles. We are fighting a war on extinction,” Murrawah said.
Coal extraction devastated their lands and cultures – totems have disappeared, fresh water has become scarce – while the effects of using it have devastated ours. “King tide, cyclones, all the violence that has been enacted on your country and people is because of the violence that has been allowed here, to us and our country,” Teila said.
Wearing the mantle of climate leadership
This week, Australia is assuming the mantle of climate leadership as co-president and head of negotiations of this year’s UN Climate Change Conference, COP31. It will lead on deliberating the summit’s priorities as world leaders and climate negotiators descend on Fiji and Tuvalu for the pre-COP meetings.
Ironically, just days before the pre-COP began, the New South Wales Independent Planning Commission approved the largest-ever coal project the state has seen, set to emit an extra 800 million tonnes of carbon emissions. I joined the Pacific Climate Warriors and other communities in submitting about 4,000 appeals to oppose the project – yet these all fell on deaf ears.
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