27 November 2024, Busan Korea - Delegates from Pacific countries have travelled far and wide this week to attend the fifth Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment (INC-5).
Busan is the final scheduled round of negotiations since 2022 when the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-5.2) unanimously approved a resolution to end plastic pollution, setting the stage to create a legally binding treaty by 2024.
Pacific negotiators are amongst more than 4,000 participants in Busan. For the past two years, they have been engaging and amplifying regional and national priorities as nations have been trying to craft a legally binding global treaty.
With five days for parties to agree on a new treaty text, we catch up with Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) negotiator, Mr Clement Yow Mulalap, on the state of play.
FSM is the lead for Pacific Small Island Developing States (Pacific SIDS) on institutional arrangements (e.g., the Conference of the Parties, subsidiary bodies, the secretariat) as well as on the preamble, principles, scope, and definitions for the instrument. Mr Mulalap is the Legal Adviser for FSM’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York.
QUESTION: What is the Pacific asking for in terms of the area of the plastics treaty negotiations that you follow?
Answer: For institutional arrangements, the Pacific SIDS support the establishment of a Conference of the Parties, several subsidiary bodies (including a subsidiary body consisting of scientific, technical, and economic and cultural panels; an implementation and compliance committee; and a body dedicated to the operations of the financial mechanism for the instrument), and a dedicated secretariat for the instrument.
For the preamble and a standalone article on principles, the Pacific SIDS want various elements in one or both of them, including an accurate recognition of the special circumstances of SIDS as being unique to SIDS; recognition of the relevance of Indigenous Peoples and of local communities as well as their knowledges for the implementation of the Instrument as complements to the best available science, in line with all of their rights as holders of such knowledges, including free, prior, and informed consent; the no-harm principle; the polluter-pays principle; the precautionary principle; and the avoidance of the imposition of a disproportionate burden of action on SIDS.
For the scope, the Pacific SIDS do not support a standalone article on the matter, preferring instead to rely on UNEA Resolution 5/14 and operationalise that Resolution in the operative articles of the instrument. Finally, for definitions, the Pacific SIDS are open to different approaches for defining key terms in the Instrument, as long as the set of definitions is comprehensive and clear.
Question: Can you talk to the progress of the negotiations/or perhaps the lack of?
Answer: There is a bit of progress, in the sense that the INC is now working on the basis of a non-paper from the INC Chair that is much more streamlined than the massive and unwieldy compilation draft text that came out of INC-4.
This focused text has fostered efforts toward convergence on multiple fronts. However, the non-paper also has major gaps, and they pertain to difficult issues, including a number (e.g., production of primary plastic polymers, chemicals of concern, financing) that are important to Pacific SIDS.
Question: What will it take for INC-5 to reach a successful conclusion? What's your gut-feeling about what's going to happen in the next few days?
Answer: There is a tremendous amount of work that must still be done in the INC, with pointed divergences persisting on various sticky issues that will determine whether the instrument will be an ambitious and effective one. It will be quite challenging to complete that work in the remaining days of the current session.
I will not predict how the session will end. I will only predict that the Pacific SIDS will continue working hard and as a unified group as we have done in the INC process, pushing for progressive outcomes for the betterment of our communities, islands, countries, and region - and, indeed, for the sake of the world, which is in dire need of a solid multilateral victory as it is beset by multiple severe and interlinked crises like plastic pollution and the climate emergency.
The fifth Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment is taking place in Busan, Republic of Korea, from 25 November to 1 December 2024.
The Pacific Islands are represented by the Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu through the support of the Government of Australia and the United Nations.
They are supported by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), working with partners the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS), Office of the Pacific Ocean Commissioner (OPOC), The Pacific Community (SPC), Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL), University of Wollongong, WWF and Massey University.
For more information, visit:https://www.unep.org/inc-plastic-pollution/session-5
Photo credit: IISD/ENB - Kiara Worth