A Corrupted UN Conference System
My Interview with a UN Global Plastics Treaty Participant
I was contacted yesterday by a participant to the UN Global Plastics Treaty conference in Busan, Korea. He attended the seven-day event as an industry representative. He had read my article and reached out for a chat. It became more of an interview on what was going on behind the scenes at this UN conference. We felt his views should be widely communicated, even if he cannot lead the dialogue himself. He has given me permission to report on our conversation. As he and his company would be threatened by activist groups opposed to his views and his presence in the plastics debate, I will call him Paul to protect his personal life.
Plenaries and Closed Meetings
There were at least 4000 people attending the UN Plastics Treaty conference and while there were a lot of plenary sessions where people could engage, because of the number of people and the overwhelming activist majority in the room, there was really no opportunity for a fruitful discussion. As the conference went on, there were fewer plenaries or updates on the progress of the negotiations and the working groups. Those who were not part of the national delegations allowed in the closed sessions were standing around and waiting a lot. Several times, Paul said, he just left and went back to his hotel room.
Paul had expected to be given a list of the side events he could attend (organized by the stakeholders). There was no program but rather many of the side events organized by NGOs were restricted only to certain invitees (ie, industry stakeholders were not allowed to attend). UNEP’s mailing list was used by these groups to promote their side events. It was evident that UNEP (the United Nations Environment Programme) was working closely with many of the NGOs in the organization of their side events and were controlling the invitations to limit any open dialogue.
National Delegations
When I asked Paul what surprised him the most, he mentioned the quality of the national delegations. As there were no meals offered at the conference site, the restaurants were full of delegates. One evening he was sitting at a table next to six members from the French delegation and he couldn’t help but listen in on their loud conversations (in French). They were full of insults towards the Macronistas, fascists and the government in Paris. From their views, Paul could assume they were Socialists and he had to wonder how much of their government’s strategy was being carried out by these delegates.
The head of the European Union delegation was bouncing around from one position to another so many times that it was evident that he was not following the official position laid out to him by the European Council and the EU Member States he was there to represent.
Paul confirmed that there were too many participants sitting on the national delegations that should not have been there. There were two people on the Belgian delegation that had no business being there. He agreed that situations like the delegation from Fiji (where four of the 11 official delegates were directors from large NGOs) was intolerable. On the claim by the Center for International Environmental Law that there were industry lobbyists flooding national delegations, Paul did not know of any. But he admitted it is difficult when countries like Saudi Arabia or Russia own the nationalized companies in key sectors like energy and chemicals. Are these people diplomats or CEOs?
NGO Objectives
I appreciated Paul’s reflections on what the NGOs really wanted. None of them were really angry with the fact that the treaty talks collapsed and there was very little reaction from the main groups on social media. Flying out of Busan, the mood in the first class cabin (where “all of the NGOs were sitting”) was almost festive. They seemed to be happy with the results and saw this as a break, giving them more time to be better organized for the next round.
But with so many different groups with different interests, the conference itself became ridiculous.
During one of the plenaries, the NGOs were making a lot of noise demanding to speak but the chairman held firm. At one point, in a rather circus-like atmosphere, the chair had to relent when several Pacific Island nation delegates demanded that an indigenous group activist be given the right to speak. But the contribution was incoherent and focused on a demand for compensatory funding. Many NGOs see the UN as nothing more than a honeypot.
It was not even clear if many of the NGOs wanted a reduction in plastics or a global waste strategy. One contribution expressed concern about how the garbage pickers would lose their livelihoods as they depend on the revenue from the plastic they can separate in the landfills. That NGO was not demanding a reduction in plastic waste, but given the tone of the event, merely qualified that we needed “safer” plastic waste.
Many groups were there to talk about their issues more than plastic waste management strategies, so there were interventions on LGTBQ rights or women’s issues. It was very hard to determine what most of the civil society groups actually wanted or stood for.
Stacking the Room
Of course it was difficult to know what the NGOs’ objectives were because there were just so many of them attending the conference. Paul confirmed my calculations (that half of the Plastics Treaty delegates were from NGOs) seemed fairly accurate. But why were so many activists making the expensive trip to Busan? Paul could not verify whether some of the more bizarre groups I highlighted in my article did actually attend but there were many curious groups there. It was evident that there was significant funding for these groups to travel to such global events.
The NGOs wanted, quite simply, to stack the room. Whenever someone made a point that supported their anti-plastics campaigns, the room shook with thunderous applause. Paul feels that the activists wanted the UN to see that everyone agreed with the strategy of a stronger treaty restricting plastics. Of course in a situation like that, industry was in no position to stand up and defend their positions.
Show me the Money
It seemed that many of the smaller nations went to Busan to demand money. This puzzled Paul since it is not like the effects of climate change. If countries want to cut plastic pollution, they simply need to ban plastics. They have every right to do that. They are not interested in that and it seems they do not have clear clean-up strategies. These nations are expecting the rich countries to finance them.
The INC-5 meeting in Busan was not about pollution financing. The objective of this process is to develop a global strategy for plastic waste management. The official title of the conference was: “Intergovernmental negotiating committee to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment”. It was not the “plastics finance” conference.
Countries coming to the UN Global Plastics Treaty conference expecting to pick up a check were not being realistic.
Industry Objectives
Plastics producers were more realistic. They were not speaking up at the conference (the blowback from the large number of activists in the room would have been counter-productive) but simply monitoring the progress of the discussions. Paul will report back to his company on how the treaty evolution could affect their products and developments.
He is not sure if PlasticsEurope, the European plastics industry trade association, wants a report. Industry does not see itself as taking a leading role in the emerging trend toward public affairs and issue management conducted via large UN conferences. Anything critical or controversial, Paul says, has to be tempered and neutralized. His company is frequently sued with internal documents seized in discovery processes (and often leaked by the law firms to the media) so discussions are usually constrained.
A bigger concern is that there are moves to remove industry groups from being allowed to engage in the stakeholder process (like the World Health Organization has done). This has already, to a certain extent, been achieved. Industry participants are merely observers and as the week progressed in Busan, there were fewer plenaries reporting back on the negotiations. As NGO representatives were members of many national delegations, they were participating on the committees and negotiations (and reporting back to their colleagues outside of the closed sessions).
Paul was having trouble containing his composure when the conversation shifted to the role of the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty. Leaders from groups like Nestlé, IKEA, Coke and Unilever were trying to be friends with the NGOs complaining that the chemical industry was not providing them with more environmentally-friendly plastic products. They claimed there was nothing they could do until the value chain behaved more responsibly. These companies do have such alternatives, Paul noted, but they do not meet their internal quality standards. Instead, they are taking a public position against the plastics producers rather than working with their consumers and their distributors to better manage the waste and recycling.
Reasons for the Failure
Expectations for Busan were low and no one had any illusion of a breakthrough. But the intransigence was coming more from the UNEP secretariat. Paul has been following the process for a long time and noted that many points in the draft document that were rejected by multiple parties during the talks in Ottawa, were still in the draft in Busan. Those who had opposed the statements before continued to hold firm and were visibly annoyed that UNEP and certain delegates had simply ignored their earlier concerns.
One of the frequent discussions in the room was to change the voting process from a consensus to a majority voting approach. The idea of a Global Plastics Treaty, in its present format, will never find a consensus everyone could agree on. But the idea of one nation, one vote would imply that small Pacific island nations will have the same influence as large industrial nations. Paul thinks an EU-style proportional, qualified majority approach might be more workable, but if a large number of nations don’t agree with UN agreements, treaties or accords, they will lose their effectiveness.
Editor’s note
In 2005, when I worked at Cefic, the European Chemical Industry Council, I was handed the responsibility of being the ICCA (International Council of Chemical Associations) liaison at the time when SAICM (the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management) was gaining attention. I was a middle manager then and it only took 10% of my time allocation so industry did not take international programs seriously. Two decades later, much of the environmental-health issue management is now taking place around UN-led events. I am happy to see ICCA getting more attention (and budget) but industry needs to be more aware of how these international bodies are having an effect on business strategies, trade and opportunities. The threat of industry being removed from the UN processes is real and it is a clear and present danger to their long-term growth and survival. They cannot continue to ignore the events and assume they can go on, business as usual.