A man holds a sign against plastic pollution outside the venue at the COP29 U.N. Climate Summit on Saturday (November 16, 2024), in Baku, Azerbaijan.
| Photo Credit: AP

The exhaust from the planes that ferried ministerial delegates to Baku for the climate conference, which concluded on Sunday (November 24, 2024), has barely settled. Yet some of them found themselves on the red-eye to this coastal city to lay the foundations of a new United Nations-mediated treaty to end plastic pollution – and potentially the production of plastic.

On December 1, representatives from 175 countries would hope that this fifth and anticipated final round of discussions of the Intergovernmental Negotiations Committee (INC), following those in Punte Del Este (Uruguay), Paris (France), Nairobi (Kenya) and Ottawa (Canada), will result in an agreement.

Were the Busan negotiations to prove successful, next year will see a diplomatic convention where Ministers from signatory countries (parties) will likely adopt the text and set the ground for periodic meetings – akin to the annual climate Conference of Parties (COP) – to evolve a legally binding treaty to progressively weed out plastic.

For comparison, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – the guiding climate change tackling agreement – was adopted in 1992 and entered into force in 1994. The first COP was held in Berlin in 1995.

“The historic Paris Agreement of 2015 where the world finally agreed to limit emissions to keep temperatures from breaching 2 degree Celsius took 21 Conference of Parties meetings. We cannot wait for 21 years to end plastic,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director, United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) at a press conference on Monday (November 25, 2024).

In March 2022, in Nairobi, the United Nations Environmental Agency (UNEP’s governing body) passed a resolution to “end plastic pollution, including in the marine environment”.

Also read: South Korea’s mountain of plastic waste shows limits of recycling

While there is global consensus that plastic pollution is a problem, and several countries are enthusiastic about ways and means to encourage recycling and prohibiting certain plastics that lead to littering – India for instance has banned single-use plastic since 2022 – many of them prefer to drag their feet on actually limiting plastic production. Many of these countries are either petro-states or those that have significant industries that manufacture plastic polymers.

Negotiations in the week ahead will centre around a ‘non-paper’, a document put forward by the INC Chair Luis Vayas Valdivieso, that serves as a synthesis of the common ground that countries have seemingly achieved in the previous negotiations since 2022.

Representatives from India, in their intervention during plenary discussions, said that it was agreed on accepting the non-paper as a base text but was opposed to certain references to “primary plastic polymers”.

The committee is expected to aim for resolution on four broad themes: plastic products, chemicals of concern as used in plastic products, product design, and production/supply and related aspects; plastic waste management, emissions and releases, existing plastic pollution, including in the marine environment, and just transition; finance, including the establishment of a financial mechanism, capacity building, technical assistance and technology transfer, and international cooperation; and implementation and compliance, national plans, reporting, monitoring of progress and effectiveness evaluation, information exchange, and awareness, education and research, according to a bulletin by the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

A legal drafting group is expected to begin work on the initial and final provisions of the text before considering the substantive and operational aspects of the new treaty, it added.

Rio de Janeiro:

G20 leaders met in Rio de Janeiro on Monday for talks on climate change, ongoing wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Lebanon, and more, at a forum that highlighted differences between world powers but also delivered some successes.

Here are five key takeaways from the summit: 

No climate breakthrough

Hopes were high that G20 leaders would jumpstart stalled UN climate talks taking place in Azerbaijan.

In their final declaration, however, they merely recognized the need for “substantially scaling up climate finance from billions to trillions from all sources.”

Crucially, they did not say who would provide the trillions.

They also did not reiterate a commitment made at the COP28 climate talks in Dubai last year for a “just, orderly, and equitable transition” away from fossil fuels.

“They haven’t stepped up to the challenge,” Mick Sheldrick, co-founder of the Global Citizen campaign group said.

Ukraine war

The war in Ukraine dominated discussions at the G20, a day after the United States gave Kyiv the green light to strike Russian territory with American-supplied long-range missiles.

Russia vowed a “response” if hit.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, who together with Brazil has been pushing for Kyiv to enter peace talks with Russia, urged the G20 to help “cool” the war.

In their final statement, G20 leaders said they welcomed “all relevant and constructive initiatives that support a comprehensive, just, and durable peace” in Ukraine.

While condemning, as at last year’s G20 summit, the “threat or use of force to seek territorial acquisition,” they made no mention of Russian aggression.

Lebanon, Gaza ceasefire calls

The leaders of the G20 — which mixes steadfast Israel allies such as the United States and Argentina with countries like Turkey that are more supportive of Palestinians — called for “comprehensive” ceasefires in both Gaza and Lebanon.

They said the Gaza ceasefire should be in line with a US-proposed UN resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire in the territory in return for the release of all hostages by Hamas.

It also called for a Lebanon ceasefire “that enables citizens to return safely to their homes on both sides of the Blue Line” that separates Lebanese and Israeli armed forces.

Tax the super-rich

The G20 endorsed the idea of cooperating to make sure “ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed,” delivering a victory to summit host Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

It said though that such cooperation should be “with full respect to tax sovereignty” and involve “debates around tax principles” as well as coming up with anti-avoidance mechanisms.

An economist specializing in inequalities who was tapped by the Brazilian G20 presidency to write a report on the issue, Gabriel Zucman, hailed the “historic decision.”

Alliance against hunger

One of the issues dearest to President Lula was forging a global alliance against hunger, and he received an early success by launching that initiative at the start of the summit, getting 82 countries to sign on.

The alliance aims to unite international efforts to provide financing in the campaign against hunger, and to replicate programs that have proved successful in some countries.

The goal is to reach half a billion people by the end of the decade, reducing what Lula — who grew up in poverty — has called a preventable “scourge that shames humanity.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

File picture of a woman wearing a mask as she rides in Shanghai, China
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Cities in Asia and the United States emit the most heat-trapping gas that feeds climate change, with Shanghai the most polluting, according to new data that combines observations and artificial intelligence.

Seven states or provinces spew more than 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases, all of them in China, except Texas, which ranks sixth, according to new data from an organisation co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and released Friday (November 15, 2024) at the United Nations climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Nations at the talks are trying to set new targets to cut such emissions and figure out how much rich nations will pay to help the world with that task.

Using satellite and ground observations, supplemented by artificial intelligence to fill in gaps, Climate Trace sought to quantify heat-trapping carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, as well as other traditional air pollutants worldwide, including for the first time in more than 9,000 urban areas.

Earth’s total carbon dioxide and methane pollution grew 0.7% to 61.2 billion metric tons with the short-lived but extra potent methane rising 0.2%. The figures are higher than other datasets “because we have such comprehensive coverage and we have observed more emissions in more sectors than are typically available,” said Gavin McCormick, Climate Trace’s co-founder.

Shanghai leads

Shanghai’s 256 million metric tons of greenhouse gases led all cities and exceeded those from the nations of Colombia or Norway. Tokyo’s 250 million metric tons would rank in the top 40 of nations if it were a country, while New York City’s 160 million metric tons and Houston’s 150 million metric tons would be in the top 50 of countrywide emissions. Seoul, South Korea, ranks fifth among cities at 142 million metric tons.

“One of the sites in the Permian Basin in Texas is by far the No. 1 worst polluting site in the entire world,” Gore said. “And maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised by that, but I think of how dirty some of these sites are in Russia and China and so forth. But Permian Basin is putting them all in the shade.”

India among most increases

China, India, Iran, Indonesia and Russia had the biggest increases in emissions from 2022 to 2023, while Venezuela, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States had the biggest decreases in pollution.

The dataset — maintained by scientists and analysts from various groups — also looked at traditional pollutants such as carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, ammonia, sulfur dioxide and other chemicals associated with dirty air. Burning fossil fuels releases both types of pollution, Mr. Gore said.

This “represents the single biggest health threat facing humanity,” Mr. Gore said.

Mr. Gore criticised the hosting of climate talks, called COPs, by Azerbaijan, an oil nation and site of the world’s first oil wells, and by the United Arab Emirates last year.

“It’s unfortunate that the fossil fuel industry and the petrostates have seized control of the COP process to an unhealthy degree,” Mr. Gore said. “Next year in Brazil, we’ll see a change in that pattern. But, you know, it’s not good for the world community to give the No. 1 polluting industry in the world that much control over the whole process.”

Lula calls for change

Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has called for more to be done on climate change and has sought to slow deforestation since returning for a third term as president. But Brazil last year produced more oil than both Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

At a press conference Friday by the Alliance of Small Island States, it’s Chair, Cedric Schuster, said the negotiating bloc feels the need to remind everyone else why the talks matter.

“We’re here to defend the Paris agreement,” Mr. Schuster said, referring to the climate deal in 2015 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). “We’re concerned that countries are forgetting that protecting the world’s most vulnerable is at the core of this framework.”