Indigenous want action at plastic talks

INDIGENOUS communities from North America are at talks on a global treaty on plastic pollution in Geneva, pleading the case for the environment they depend upon, which is slowly being choked by microplastics.

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In the grounds of the UN headquarters, overlooking Lake Geneva and the Alps beyond, a chant suddenly drifted through the humid summer air: a “water song”.

Standing barefoot in a circle, six women and a young man from multiple North American Indigenous communities decided to do a spontaneous purification ritual.

A melancholic second chant follows, dedicated to the well-being “until the seventh generation” of “all the delegates” from the 184 countries attempting to thrash out what would be the first international treaty on tackling the worldwide ever-growing scourge of plastic pollution.

The UN-hosted talks, which began last Tuesday, resumed yesterday for four more days, with oil-producing states and the so-called ambitious group of nations still far apart on what the treaty should encompass.