A global plastics pollution treaty is possible

Camels eat plastic and rubbish by the roadside in Umm Al Quwain. In 2021, 'The National' shared video footage of a baby camel in Abu Dhabi eating a plastic bag that it mistook for food. Steven McCombe / The NationalShow less

The environmental damage done by discarded single-use plastics is compounded by the fact it can often be out of sight, out of mind. From the moment a bag, bottle or straw is thoughtlessly dropped or inadequately disposed of, it begins a journey that can lead to it lingering for many years in remote locations, such as in rotting landfills or the world’s oceans.

Even the desert is not immune. In 2021, The National shared heart-breaking video footage captured by an environmental researcher that showed a baby camel in the Abu Dhabi wilderness eating a blue plastic bag that it mistook for food. Almost a year later, the Dubai government released figures showing that consumption of plastic caused nearly 90 per cent of turtle deaths in the UAE and half of camel fatalities.

The sheer scale of the issue is sobering; the UN says the equivalent of 2,000 lorries full of plastic are dumped into the world's oceans, rivers and lakes every day while each year up to 23 million tonnes of plastic waste leaks into aquatic ecosystems. A global problem demands a global solution; as the international community marks World Environment Day today, it is worth noting that in exactly two months’ time, countries will come together in Jeju, South Korea to work on a legally binding international treaty to eradicate plastics pollution.

It is a laudable endeavour and one that the UAE is behind. The country is part of a 70-nation High-Ambition Coalition that wants to end plastics pollution by 2040 and, in 2023, then environment minister Mariam Almheiri told an environmental meeting in Paris that although “plastic pollution is an epidemic … we can take pragmatic action to reduce it over the next few decades”. However, building consensus for international action is often tricky.

In March 2022, the UN Environmental Assembly convened in Nairobi and 175 countries voted to adopt a global treaty for plastic pollution as well as an accelerated timeline that could have led to the agreement’s implementation as early as this year. Clearly that timetable was too ambitious; since then, progress has been dogged by disagreements over the scale of the proposed treaty, who pays for clean up, and whether such a deal should cover the lifecycle of plastics from production to disposal. The differences between plastics producers and environmental NGOs as well as countries in the Global South and governments of industrialised states are profound.

With the right approach a deal can be struck. A little over two weeks ago, member states of the World Health Organisation formally adopted the world's first pandemic agreement after three years of intensive negotiations. Similar strong bargaining characterised the run-up to 2023’s Cop28 climate summit in Dubai, but here too there was a successful outcome in the form of the UAE Consensus.

In exactly two months’ time, countries will come together in Jeju, South Korea to work on a legally binding international treaty to eradicate plastics pollution

However, what such divisions must not be allowed to do is sow fatalism or deter the many efforts to mitigate the scourge of single-use plastics in our ecosystem. There is much innovative work that is running in parallel to the talks process, such as emerging ocean clean-up technologies, the development of advanced biodegradable plastics and the promotion of the circular economy in which businesses and governments re-use and re-design existing plastics while also working on greener alternatives.

National domestic policies can also play their part. In January 2021, the UAE Cabinet approved the Circular Economy Policy 2021-2031 and established the UAE Circular Economy Council. The following year, Abu Dhabi introduced a ban on single-use plastic bags. In January this year, Dubai also banned single-use plastics; the emirate has announced plans to close landfills by 2027.

By bringing an open mind and realistic goals it is possible to produce a positive outcome for everyone and make scenes such as wildlife being choked and poisoned by plastic trash a thing of the past.