Daily Recap from November 30, 2024: Day 6 of INC-5

The Waiting Game?

For the past two days, negotiations on the plastics treaty have largely been a black box to observers, frontline communities, wastepickers, and the Indigenous Peoples nations and groups. The INC Chair and Member States have been cloistered away in closed-door “informals” and “bilaterals” while frontline communities, wastepickers, and the Indigenous Peoples nations and groups have been left out in the cold, wondering whether the ambitious treaty that we have fought for over the past two years is still on the table. Meanwhile diplomats make decisions on behalf of the very people whose lives and communities are most impacted by this system of mass production and consumption of plastic.?

The utter lack of transparency in the negotiations is further evidence of a?process that is being held hostage by a few like-minded mainly petro-states. There is no way of knowing which countries the Chair is catering to and which he is excluding, therefore replicating the exact same geopolitical and colonial power imbalances that have fueled the plastics crisis, and directly contradicting his promises of an open and transparent treaty negotiation process. To add insult to injury, it is highly likely that while civil society must conjecture about the fate of the treaty from the outside, the fossil fuel industry is embedded in these closed-door sessions, hiding in plain sight among country delegations.??

This is not the first time that civil society has been excluded from critical negotiations– we were also barred from attending intersessional work in advance of INC-5, and there are countless examples from the past week and throughout the INCs exemplifying how UNEP and the Chair have little interest in ensuring that rightsholders, waste pickers, Indigenous Peoples, youth, scientists, and environmental justice leaders have a seat at the table.?

The Chair’s next non paper will be a reflection of the conversations he has chosen to have, and the conversations he hasn’t. We hope that the paper will be representative of the ambitious majority, and not an appeasement to those few who have no actual interest in ending plastic pollution.?

Closed-door informal consultations ran well into the night, focusing on some of the most contentious issues including production and finance.?

Plastic is Colonization: Indigenous Peoples Speak Out at INC-5

Today, the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Plastics held a press conference at BEXCO in Busan, to highlight the disproportionate impacts of plastic pollution on Indigenous Peoples throughout the plastic “death cycle,”? the lack of transparency in negotiations, their wrongful exclusion from the process, and the vital importance of enshrining Indigenous rights and leadership in the final treaty.?

Juan Mancias of the Society of Native Nations discussed the absurdity of countries not being able to reach consensus about the need to curb plastic production: “There was no ‘consensus’ when they decided to start making plastics.”?

Tori Cress, Society of Native Nations and Co-Chair of the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Plastics, described the devastating impacts that Canada’s tar sands have had on Indigenous communities in the area: “If you spend time in the tar sands region you will smell it,? you can’t escape it, it’s inescapable.? Dene, Métis, and Cree people in their lifetime have witnessed the destruction of the water that they used to drink from as children.”?

Jo Banner, Co-Founder and Co-Director of The Descendents Project stated,? “I went into the convenience store next to my hotel, and I found something that was crazy. It was a single egg, in a plastic container; there was more plastic than there was egg! And I’m thinking, this is what we are dying for. An egg in a plastic container…The industry wants to make us want to think that we’re dying for heart valves and space rocket parts and I’m not saying that’s not part of what plastic makes, but at the end of the day we are dying for foolishness, for straws.”?

Matt Perryman, Coordinator and Indigenous Scientist-Tāngata Whenua Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, addressed how Indigenous Peoples rights were ignored throughout the treaty process: “The fact that industry can sit in decision-making rooms with governments, making decisions about our future, about our children, while actively pushing us out. The total lack of transparency that we’re seeing we’re expected to be ok with? It’s not ok, and we need to make sure that they understand that.”?

Press contacts:

Claire Arkin

[email protected] | +1 973 444 4869

Resources:?

• GAIA Press Kit
• GAIA INC-5 Booklet (policy briefings and recommendations)
• GAIA Africa Recap

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GAIA is a worldwide alliance of more than 1,000 grassroots groups, non-governmental organizations, and individuals in over 90 countries. With our work we aim to catalyze a global shift towards environmental justice by strengthening grassroots social movements that advance solutions to waste and pollution. We envision a just, zero waste world built on respect for ecological limits and community rights, where people are free from the burden of toxic pollution, and resources are sustainably conserved, not burned or dumped.?