OTTAWA, Canada: Environmental activists on Thursday condemned the growing presence of oil industry lobbies at talks in Ottawa on a global pact to reduce plastic pollution.
More than 196 lobbyists from the fossil fuel and chemical industries are in Ottawa for the fourth round of negotiations. According to the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), the latest round of talks includes about 40 percent more industry lobbyists than the previous meeting in Kenya in November.
The ongoing meeting is considered very important as it will be the second last session before the final talks in South Korea later this year.
From the tops of mountains to the depths of the ocean, negotiators from 175 countries are coming together to ratify the world’s first UN treaty to address the scourge of plastics in human blood and breast milk.
The influence of industry lobbyists is gradually increasing as calls for a treaty to address plastics production increase both inside and outside the negotiations, CIEL noted.
They are, for example, more than the 180 representatives of the EU delegation and three times more than the 58 researchers of the Union of Scientists for an effective treaty on plastics, the NGO said.
CIEL’s Rachel Radvany lamented, “The presence of actors in the room who are responsible for generating this crisis creates power imbalances that obstruct progress.”
While plastic manufacturers push for more recycling, environmentalists want to reduce the amount of plastic produced.
