The second session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-2) on plastic pollution took place in Paris, France, from 29 May – 2 June 2023. IPCP members were in attendance and provided their recaps.
Charlie Chaplin once said “life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but comedy in long-shot”. However, Chaplin was only half-right about the first two days of the ongoing second session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) on Plastic Pollution.
With the whole world’s attention, the meeting opened with the remark from the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme, Ms. Inger Andersen, “we can’t recycle our way out of this mess”. This inspiring remark brought much optimism among the delegates that the week ahead would be well-spent towards developing a zero draft of an ambitious global treaty that will not only look into the waste aspect, but also upstream life-cycle stages of plastic pollution, including capping the plastic production.
Ironically, this inspiring remark was the highest point of the first two days. The INC Chair’s plan to rapidly go through the procedural matters and move into substantiative discussion of key elements for inclusion under the treaty was instead rapidly disrupted by several Member States and turned into a messy situation. The center of all the discussion were the yet-to-be-adopted draft Rules of Procedure.
The Rules of Procedure should have been one of the first things to be agreed on in order to set the modality and facilitate negotiations and decision-making on substantive matters. It was originally also planned in this way. A dedicated meeting of the Open-Ended Working Group to the INC took place one year ago in Dakar, Senegal. The Member States and stakeholders tried hard, with nearly everything in agreement but Rule 37, more specifically in terms of how to count the European Union and its Member States in any voting event.
Seemingly a minor point, but: nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. The Member States and stakeholders tried hard again at the first session of the INC in Nov-Dec 2022, but were still unable to reach agreement, leading to the Rules of Procedure remaining a draft. This then became a fuse to explode the process at INC 2.
Several Member States used the opportunities to open other rules, particularly to put Rule 38 on decision-making in brackets (the UN way of indicating disagreement of certain text). The sticking point is whether there could be a vote if no consensus could be achieved at INC 5. The Member States that want to bracket Rule 38 kept justifying their motion by emphasizing the needs for reaching consensus in any case. But as a Senegalese delegate rightfully pointed out, “Consensus is what kills democracy. It’s different from unanimity, which is when everyone agrees. With consensus, if one or two countries don’t agree, we’re stuck.”
One irony is that the Member States were not able to vote on whether to adopt Rule 38 (since it’s the function of Rule 38), they had to somehow find some consensus in order to move things forward to discuss substantive matters. Therefore, the delegates used all the time available to them, including during lunch and dinner, to find a solution.
As always, there have been good and bad news. Good news is that a solution was found after two days of long negotiations (until Wednesday 1 am), which was then presented to the plenary on Wednesday morning. Member States agreed not to bracket Rule 38.
Bad news is that the solution may well be used as a time bomb. Member States agreed to add an interpretative statement in the Report of INC 2, “the INC understands that, based on discussions on the INC draft RoP, there are different views among INC members on rule 38.1. Therefore, the provisional application of 38.1 has been a subject of debate. In the event rule 38.1 is evoked before the rules are adopted, members will recall this lack of agreement.” This statement might effectively work as de-facto brackets around Rule 38.
In other words, in the case that no consensus is reached at INC 5, it is very likely no voting will be possible. What option would be left? Compromise and agree on a low-ambition “treaty”? Everything is possible, in either way. Looking optimistically, INC can finally move on to discuss substantive matters and there’re still time to reach consensus on an ambitious treaty. This also means much work is yet ahead of everyone of us, and we still have every reason to believe that the INC process will be a comedy in long-shot.
—
Longer daily reports prepared by the International Institute for Sustainable Development, Earth Negotiations Bulletin are available at: https://enb.iisd.org/plastic-pollution-marine-environment-negotiating-committee-inc2.