From this Tuesday, April 23 to Monday, the 29th, the Shaw Center in Ottawa (Canada) hosts the fourth working session of the Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee to develop a legally binding international instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment (INC-4 ). The new session should be the penultimate preparation meeting for what would be the first binding agreement within the UN framework on plastics and their waste, under negotiation since March 2022.
The revised draft text (available in English) of the international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including the marine environment (UNEP/PP/INC.4/3) will be discussed this week with the aim of reaching an update that includes the serious problem of waste in the sea and the equitable distribution of the costs of its treatment.
The UN indicates that in the new meeting three thematic parallel events will be held parallel to INC-4, on Wednesday, April 24 and Thursday, April 25, 2024 at the location of the session:
1. Plastic pollution in the marine environment.
2. Approaches to capacity development, financing and financial mechanisms.
3. Allow a just transition.
The new session that the UN leads in Ottawa aims to implement Resolution 5/14, the historic decision adopted at the fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA), in March 2022, by which it was agreed formulate a legally binding international instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine context.
The resolution titled “End Plastic Pollution: Towards a Legally Binding International Instrument” states that the treaty must address the entire life cycle of plastics and raises the aspiration of concluding negotiations by the end of 2024.
Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee (INC) is the negotiating body created by UNEA to draft the text of a global agreement on plastic pollution. The Committee resides in the United Nations Environment Program and is made up of delegates from Member States. Observers of INC meetings include intergovernmental and civil society organizations, the private sector and scientific communities.
The UN planned for the negotiators to meet five times between 2022 and 2024 (the current one is the fourth of them) to finalize the details of the legal instrument. The first session of the Committee (CIN-1) was held in November 2022 in Punta del Este (Uruguay). The second round of negotiations (INC-2) took place in Paris, France, in June 2023, and for the third session (INC-3), negotiators met in Nairobi, Kenya in late 2023.
