Connecting the Dots: Plastic Pollution and the Planetary Emergency
Introduction: Sounding the alarm
The toxic pollution resulting from rampant overproduction of virgin plastics and their lifecycles is irreversible, directly undermines our health, drives biodiversity loss, exacerbates climate change, and risks generating large-scale harmful environmental changes.1
With emissions into the oceans alone due to triple by 2040, in line with production,2 it threatens human civilisation and the planet’s basic ability to maintain a habitable environment.3
A recent United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) synthesis report entitled: “Making Peace with Nature’’ identified three existential environmental threats - climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution - and discusses how they need to be addressed together to achieve sustainability.4
Two of these - biodiversity and climate change - have had dedicated multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) for nearly 30 years5 but, despite plastic pollution being one of the most prevalent and destructive environmental pollutants in existence, no such instrument for plastic yet exists.
In November 2021, the Conference of the Parties (CoP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) met to decide the future global climate policy agenda. Despite the established connection between plastic production and use, and related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, this discussion was notably absent and no mention of plastic was made in the final Glasgow Climate pact.6
In 2022, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) CoP15 will convene to negotiate the future biodiversity agenda. Target 7 of the proposed post-2020 framework calls for the elimination of plastic waste discharges, although it is unclear how this will be achieved.7
Environmental crises do not exist in isolation - they are intricately interconnected and mutually reinforcing. The UN report substantiates this and urges member states to better align goals, targets, commitments and mechanisms under environmental agreements in order to be more effective. The report also showed through scientific assessment that human-induced environmental threats are sufficiently serious to represent a ‘planetary emergency’.
This report sounds the alarm on pollution caused by plastic throughout its lifecycle by exposing how it drives pollution, biodiversity loss and climate change, compromises human health and poses a direct threat to planetary boundaries. Based on this, it provides recommendations on how to ensure multidimensional, long-term and collaborative policy that considers plastic pollution as a planetary boundary threat and takes into account its knock-on impacts on other environmental crises.
By initiating negotiations for a new plastics treaty at the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) in February 2022, UN member states have a chance to fundamentally address a significant driver of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
Click HERE to read the full report
