Busan, South Korea — Countries and regional blocs pushing for a stronger global plastics treaty said they remain hopeful of striking a deal in the final hours of negotiations but also opened the door to finding other ways to move forward.
At a standing-room-only morning news conference on Dec. 1 at the negotiation venue in the port city of Busan, delegates from the European Union, Mexico, France, Panama, Rwanda and Fiji said they would push hard for a treaty that included some limits on plastics production, as well as provisions around chemicals of concern and plastic products.
The talks must conclude early Dec. 2 in South Korean time, which is 14 hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast time.
Negotiations have been marred by deep disputes as a group of oil-producing nations have opposed measures like production limits and chemicals regulation.
The talks have largely retreated behind closed doors for the last two days as negotiators try to bridge those gaps.
Sivendra Michael, Fiji's permanent secretary for the environment, said the countries will negotiate hard for the next 24 hours, but suggested they will find other ways to move forward with the kind of agreement they want if the Busan talks don't succeed.
"We are still here, having hope and pushing," Michael said. "If it does not have the provisions of what we expect from an ambitious treaty, then we'll come back to the multilateral process … pushing for an ambitious treaty.
"Like all of us in this table have said, nobody is going to leave Busan with a weak treaty," he said.
Olga Givernet, a diplomat from France and ministery delegate for energy, said countries want a treaty that goes beyond waste management.
"It's not another waste treaty that we want," Givernet said. "It's making assessments on production and its making assessments on chemicals of concern and on problematic products."
Givernet said the EU and a bloc of 60-plus countries called the High Ambition Coalition presented an updated proposal on chemicals of concern and plastic products to the head of the formal body running the talks, the international negotiating committee.
Sources described the proposal as including lists of chemicals and products and setting a minimum floor that countries must have.
Some environmental groups had criticized draft language as being too weak in those provisions, but also pointed to a public proposal this week on chemicals of concern from China, which had previously argued against it being in the treaty, as showing movement in the negotiations.
Another source close to the closed door talks there were indications that the United States was seeking language on production that, while not what more than 80 countries, including the EU, have proposed, would include production reduction in the treaty in some capacity.
It would be less than the production cap proposal from more than 80 countries, led by Panama, delivered this week but instead "would give [countries] a little more wiggle room in how they would want to apply it," the source said.
Juliet Kabera, director general of the environment management authority for Rwanda, said more than 100 of the 175 countries in the talks support an ambitious framework.
"We find ourselves at a critical juncture in these negotiations," she said. "As it stands, we are not making progress on the most pressing and interconnected issues that must be addressed."
Rwanda is a co-chair of the High Ambition Coalition, a collection of more than 60 countries.
"We are not here to settle for a treaty that lacks an ambition to make a tangible impact," she said. "It is disappointing to see that a small number of [countries] remain unsupportive of the measures necessary to drive real change."
The EU's top representative to the talks told the press conference that the outcome in Busan is far from clear but said countries will engage in hard negotiations over the next day.
"In these final hours, we're still with great concern about the outcome," said Anthony Agotha, special envoy for climate and environmental diplomacy for the EU. "In these final hours, the European Union, we will work until the last dog dies to get it done. But it has to be meaningful."
