Environmentalists decry oil lobby presence at plastic treaty talks

Environmental activists denounced Thursday the increased presence of oil industry lobbyists at talks in Ottawa on a global treaty to reduce plastic pollution.

The 196 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists outnumber any single delegation in Ottawa for the fourth round of negotiations. These talks have nearly 40 percent more industry lobbyists than the last round in Kenya in November, according to the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).

The meeting in Ottawa is considered crucial as it is the penultimate session before a final round of negotiations in South Korea later this year.

Negotiators from 175 countries are meeting to nail down a world-first UN treaty to address the scourge of plastics found everywhere from mountaintops to ocean depths, and in human blood and breast milk.

"The footprint of industry lobbyists is progressively increasing as calls for the treaty to address plastic production grow both inside and outside the negotiations," noted CIEL.

They are more numerous than the 180 representatives of the European Union delegations, for example, and three times more than the 58 researchers from the Coalition of Scientists for an Effective Treaty on plastic, said the NGO.

"The presence of actors in the room who are responsible for generating this crisis creates power imbalances that obstruct progress," lamented CIEL's Rachel Radvany.

"The influence and growing presence of fossil fuel and petrochemical industries are not what the people want nor what the climate needs," said Graham Forbes, of Greenpeace.

Companies are not allowed to register for the talks, but lobbyists can join professional associations or national delegations in order to participate.

Plastics producers are pushing for more recycling while environmentalists want cuts to the volume of plastic produced, as annual production has more than doubled in 20 years to 460 million metric tons, and is on track to triple within four decades.

Industry lobbyists "are enjoying seats on state delegations while the communities most impacted by the plastic crisis struggle to have their voices heard," said Tori Cress, who is representing Indigenous peoples at the negotiations

The Ottawa talks are scheduled to continue through April 29.