Nearly 200 chemical and fossil fuel industry lobbyists plan to join this week’s United Nations negotiations on the first global treaty to curb plastic pollution, a 37 percent increase from the previous meeting in November, according to showed an analysis published Thursday.
The increase in the number of industry representatives registered at the negotiations in Ottawa, Canada, comes as the talks enter a crucial stage. There is only one round of negotiations left to produce a final text that all countries agree to before the end of the year.
The goal is to create a legally binding treaty that covers the entire life cycle of plastic, from production to disposal or reuse. But some fossil fuel and petrochemical industry groups, as well as countries that rely on those industries, oppose any U.N. treaty that imposes strict production limits or phase-out of chemicals or products.
While more than 4,000 people have registered to attend the talks, civil society groups said the strong presence of representatives from industries that would be subject to new regulations could undermine the negotiation process.
“The presence in the room of actors responsible for generating this crisis creates power imbalances that obstruct progress,” said Rachel Radvany, an environmental health activist at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), who conducted the analysis.
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Similar complaints were made about the heavy representation of fossil fuel industry lobbyists at last year’s COP28 climate change talks.
CIEL, a nonprofit legal group, uses registration data provided by the United Nations Environment Program, which monitors the talks. CIEL featured representatives from oil companies, chemical companies, and their trade groups as lobbyists, as well as non-profit organizations or think tanks that receive significant support from those industries.
The International Council of Chemical Associations, which is made up of members from the plastics, petrochemical and chemical manufacturing industries, responded to CIEL’s analysis, saying NGOs would be there in greater numbers than industry representatives.
“While we are outnumbered by the 2,202 total members of the NGO community, including 166 delegates from larger international NGOs… we value the emphasis on stakeholder engagement to help achieve our shared goal of ending plastic pollution,” the group said in a statement. Thursday.
Registered chemical and fossil fuel industry lobbyists, who include representatives from companies such as ExxonMobil and Dow, outnumber the combined 180 diplomatic representatives of European Union delegations, according to the analysis.
These lobbyists also outnumber the 73 representatives fielded by the Pacific Small Island Developing States by more than two to one.
Several lobbyists are assigned to delegations from Malaysia, Thailand and Iran, among others, giving them “privileged access to exclusive sessions of member states, where sensitive debates take place behind closed doors,” said the coordinator of the global petrochemical campaign of CIEL, Delphine Levi Alvares.
OFFENSIVE CHARM
Groups representing more specialized sectors of the plastics industry are also making their presence felt in Ottawa, hosting events and receptions on the sidelines of the negotiations.
The Vinyl Institute, which represents the PVC/vinyl industry, previously hosted a cocktail party at the November negotiations in Nairobi. The event was aimed at attracting delegations from key countries, including the US State Department, according to emails and recordings obtained by the watchdog group Documented and reviewed by Reuters.
“We decided that coming into INC-3 we wanted to be nice,” Dom Decaria, technical director of the Vinyl Institute, said in a speech at an industry event in Austin on December 1. 6. “We wanted to have a presence, but we also wanted to be the group that people in these member states feel comfortable having a cup of coffee with.”
The Institute is once again present at the Ottawa talks.
Decaria told Reuters this week that he wants to be part of the negotiations to see where positions can converge.
“Our mission right now is to see how we, as an industry, can gather common ground with all stakeholders,” he said.