Groups claim exclusion from global plastics treaty talks in Bangkok

Bangkok, Aug. 21: Experts meet in Bangkok this week to advance what would be the first international treaty to tackle the surging problem of plastic pollution. Final treaty negotiations take place in South Korea in November.

Yet most of the people who have been closely tracking the negotiations — environmentalists, tribal leaders and residents from communities hard-hit by plastic production and waste — are shut out of the talks in Bangkok.

Many plastic industry representatives say they can’t get into the room either.

In a series of letters to the United Nations Environment Programme, the meeting sponsor, hundreds of organizations said the closure runs counter to typical international environmental treaty-making. They said organizers have a responsibility to be transparent and allow public participation. They worry the approach in Bangkok could set a bad precedent.

In earlier meetings of the UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution in 2022 and 2023, countries spent a lot of time debating rules and procedure, including how they would vote on decisions.

This meeting of subject matter experts is the first where the substance of what could go into the treaty will be discussed in detail. It runs through next week.

Negotiating committee Executive Secretary Jyoti Mathur-Filipp replied in a letter that she wasn’t authorized to let people in and countries had not agreed on having observers participate.

U.N. documents only spell out member states and selected technical experts as participants.

The Bangkok meeting is less formal than a treaty negotiation, she said. It is not unprecedented in U.N. treaty processes for technical experts to meet amongst themselves, Mathur-Filipp said in a written statement to the AP.

That being said, she wrote, observers are important to environmental treaties and “we work very hard” for them to be able to participate.

Anyone who wants to be in the room in Bangkok must either be part of a national delegation or chosen as one of two dozen invited technical experts.

The two expert groups are focused on the chemicals that go into plastic products and how the treaty could be financed. The negotiating countries will then take up those reports at the fifth and final session in South Korea.

In 2022, most of the world’s nations agreed to make the first legally-binding treaty on plastics pollution, including in the oceans. The goal was to complete negotiations by the end of 2024. Thousands of environmentalists, plastic industry representatives, scientists, tribal leaders, waste pickers, and others concerned about plastic pollution have traveled as observers to four continents to share their views at the prior treaty talks. (AP)