Beat Plastic Pollution: Historic Resolution on Plastic Pollution Adopted

Beat Plastic Pollution: Relevance

• GS 3: Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment.

Beat Plastic Pollution: Context

• Recently, 175 countries have adopted a historic resolution to end plastic pollution by creating an intergovernmental committee to finalise a legally binding agreement by 2024.
• Read about Extended Producer Responsibility, Plastic Waste Management Amendment Rules, 2021, and India Plastic Pact

बीट प्लास्टिक पॉल्यूशन: प्लास्टिक प्रदूषण पर ऐतिहासिक संकल्प अंगीकृत किया गया

Historic Resolution on Plastic Pollution Adopted: Key points

• The resumed session of fifth United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA 5.2) was held from 28^th February 2022 to 2^nd March 2022 in Nairobi to strengthen actions for nature to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
• The meeting considered three draft resolutions to address plastic pollution.
• Importantly, one of the draft resolutions under consideration was that of India. The draft resolution submitted by India called for immediate collective voluntary action by countries.
• The resolution to form a legally binding agreement by 2024 was the most significant environmental multilateral deal since the Paris accord.
• The resolution establishes an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), which will begin its work in 2022, with the ambition of completing a draft global legally binding agreement by the end of 2024.
• UNEP@50: It will be a high-level event, devoted to the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the creation of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in 1972.
• UNEP@50 theme: Strengthening UNEP for the implementation of the environmental dimension of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

UNEP UPSC: Tri planetary crisis

• UNEP speak of a triple planetary crisis—the crisis of climate change; the crisis of biodiversity loss; and the crisis of pollution and waste. Together, they pose a huge threat to human peace and prosperity.
• Crisis of climate change: Concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are higher than two million years and one billion children are at extremely high risk from the impacts of climate change.
• Crisis of biodiversity loss: we continue to erode the natural world. Seventy-seven per cent of ice-free land surface has been modified by human activities and one million species face the threat of extinction.
• Crisis of pollution and waste: 11 million tonnes of plastic flows into our oceans every year and more than 90 per cent of us live in cities where air quality does not meet World Health Organisations standards.
• The triple planetary crisis has been caused by decades of relentless and unsustainable consumption.

UNEP Recommendations

• We must tackle the earth’s environmental emergencies and human well-being as one indivisible challenge.
• We must transform our economic and financial systems to power the shift to sustainability.
• We must transform our food, water and energy systems to meet growing human needs in an equitable, resilient and environmentally friendly manner.

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