UN plastic treaty talks progress not ‘sufficient

Talks at the United Nations on forging a landmark treaty to combat the scourge of plastic pollution have made insufficient progress, the negotiations chair warned on Saturday ina frank midway assessment.

- Agencies

The negotiations, which opened on Tuesday, have four days left to find consensus on a legally-binding instrument that would tackle the growing prob-Jem choking the environment.

“Progress made has not been sufficient,” Ecuadoran diplomat Luis Vayas Valdivieso told delegates in a blunt summary as all 184 country delegations gathered in the main assembly hall.

“We have arrived at a critical stage where a real push to achieve our common goal is needed”, ahead of the Thursday deadline.

“August 14 is not just a deadline for our work: it is a date by which we must deliver.”

The draft text as it stands, released publicly ahead of Saturday’s session, has now ballooned from 22 to 35 pages, with the number of brackets in the text going up from 371 to almost 1,500.