Context: World leaders, ministers and other representatives from nearly 200 countries at the United Nations environment assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, agreed to develop a treaty designed to bring an end to the scourge of plastic pollution.

• United Nations is poised to approve a plan to create the first-ever global plastic pollution treaty, hailing the resolution as the most important multilateral climate deal since the landmark 2015 Paris accord.

Key Facts on Plastic

• It's thought more than five trillion pieces of plastic are in the world's oceans, which can take years to break down.
• Each year, 400 million tonnes of plastic is produced and 40% of that is single-use - plastic only used once before it's thrown away.
• More than eight million tonnes of plastic enters the world's oceans each year and most of that escapes from land.
• Not all plastic can be recycled, either because of the way it's made or because it's too expensive or difficult to do so.
• Animals on land or at sea can be harmed by plastic. They can get trapped in carrier bags or food packaging or mistake plastic for food.

Key Points

• A resolution at the recent fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-5.2) held in Nairobi sought to end plastic pollution and forge an international legally binding agreement by 2024. 
• It was hosted by the UN Environment Programme.
• The resolution will pertain to marine ecosystems as well, and will include both binding and voluntary approaches from member states.

Why there is need for a binding resolution to limit plastic pollution?

• Plastic production has risen exponentially in the last decades and now amounts to some 400 million tons per year– a figure set to double by 2040.

The impacts of plastic production and pollution on the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution are a catastrophe in the making:

• Exposure to plastics can harm human health, potentially affecting fertility, hormonal, metabolic and neurological activity, and open burning of plastics contributes to air pollution.

By 2050 greenhouse gas emissions associated with plastic production, use and disposal would account for 15 percent of allowed emissions, under the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C (34.7°F).

• More than 800 marine and coastal species are affected by this pollution through ingestion, entanglement, and other dangers.
• Some 11 million tonnes of plastic waste flow annually into the oceans. This may triple by 2040.

A shift to a circular economy can

• reduce the volume of plastics entering oceans by over 80 per cent by 2040;
• reduce virgin plastic production by 55 per cent;
• save governments US$70 billion by 2040;
• reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent; and
• create 700,000 additional jobs – mainly in the global south.

Outcomes of the meet on ending plastic pollution

• The world’s ministers for the environment agreed to establish an Inter-governmental Negotiating Committee (INC) with the mandate to forge an international legally binding agreement to end plastic pollution.
• INC will begin its work in 2022, with the ambition of completing a draft global legally binding agreement by the end of 2024.
• This is the most significant environmental multilateral deal since the Paris accord. It is an insurance policy for this generation and future ones, so they may live with plastic and not be doomed by it.
• However, the U.N. agency warned that the success of any agreement would ultimately depend on the final terms of the deal, with delegates set to iron out the finer details by contending with the interests of member states.

By: Shubham Tiwari