A key week of negotiations kicks off Tuesday, as representatives from 176 countries descend on Ottawa to tackle global challenges posed by plastics.
The fourth and penultimate instalment of talks tees up a final session later this year in Korea, where parties hope to sign onto a binding international treaty on plastic pollution.
“This process is really a once-in-a-generation opportunity to end plastic pollution. It’s a historic process,” said Eirik Lindebjerg, the World Wildlife Fund’s global plastics policy lead.
To date, negotiations have amounted to a bulky 69-page draft. Negotiators will now work to whittle that text down to a list of core issues. Succeeding at that will be key to scoring a global treaty at the final session.
In the draft’s opening lines, the parties agree that “rapidly increasing levels of plastic pollution represent a serious environmental problem at a global scale.”
But the tension point is whether plastic production or waste management should be the focus of …