Posted on 07 June 2023
The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) held its second session from 29 May to 2 June in Paris. The series of meetings aim to prepare a legally binding, international instrument to address plastic pollution, and this meeting primarily allowed governments to express opinions on the Options Paper.
The meeting saw Ms Teuru Passfield from the Cook Islands deliver an address on behalf of 14 Pacific Small Islands Developing States (PSIDS), to project a unified voice of recommendation in regard to the paper.
She addressed the need for the text of the plastics treaty to include the phasing out of primary plastic polymers. “We support reducing with a view to eliminating the manufacture, export and import of virgin polymers” Passfield says, as well as requesting additives be recognised as a sub category in the treaty.
She says Pacific nations also support “the inclusion of incentive and disincentive measures that reduce the production of and demand for plastic products.”