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The Norwegian seeking a global plastics deal

May 31, 2023 View in browser
 
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By Leonie Cater

VERBATIM

Norway's environmental minister looks on.

Norwegian Environment Minister Espen Barth Eide is in Paris this week for U.N. plastic talks. | Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images

Norwegian Environment Minister Espen Barth Eide is trying to get the world to control plastic waste.

Norway, alongside Rwanda, is leading a self-named High Ambition Coalition of more than 50 countries pushing for an ambitious global plastics treaty aimed at ending plastic pollution by 2040.

Eide faces a tough gauntlet: Oil-rich United Arab Emirates abstained from signing the coalition’s most recent statement, seemingly spooked by talk of reducing plastic production. And several nations want more flexibility — including the United States, which hasn’t signed up to the coalition and is pushing hard for a treaty that allows countries to set their own action plans rather than setting binding targets.

Eide spoke to POLITICO ahead of the second round of negotiations, which kicked off Monday in Paris.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Countries go into these talks divided on several counts. In your view, where are the deepest divides? And which aspects of negotiations require the most urgent attention?

Number one, that we come out of these negotiations with the firm agreement to actually start drafting a text. I think it’s very important that before we go to [the third round of talks], we actually have a text that looks like a treaty, because we need to move this forward. And [the text needs to include] an agreement that the goal should be set to end plastic pollution by 2040. Thirdly, that there are actually some legal commitments that everybody has to sign up to.

But the biggest news [Friday] was that Japan announced they are now joining the High Ambition Coalition. And that means that the number of industrialized countries that do not sign up for this is now becoming rather small.

The United Arab Emirates is a member of the High Ambition Coalition, but didn’t sign the latest statement. What do you make of its abstention?

They made clear, open and honestly, that there were a couple of points that they opted out of. But they still are a member of the coalition. And as long as that is clear and stated, I mean, you can do that. And that has to do particularly with reducing overall volumes. And so I don’t want to speak for them but apparently the argument is that they do want to regulate [plastic] quality and recyclability and so on, but they are not on board in saying that the volume of production should go down.

Espen Barth Eide pull quote.

Some countries like Saudi Arabia have voiced a desire for a less ambitious treaty — and they’ll likely be trying to get other countries, like the oil-rich UAE, on side. How concerned are you about that?

My diplomatic instinct tells me that we will deal with that problem if it occurs. What I’m seeing now is that more and more countries seem to agree [with us]. When you start setting common goals, and then commission a lot of research and analysis about how these goals are met … it seems very unlikely that you can actually achieve the goal of reducing the leakage [of plastic waste] to nature sufficiently without also addressing the volume. Increasingly, we’re also seeing that countries understand that the total volume has to go down.

This is not the end of the plastic industry. It’s just a more regulated plastic industry. Just like … carmakers used to make fossil cars. They still make cars, but now they’re electric, but there are still cars. So it’s not about taking away the business, it’s about changing the nature of the business.

How big of a gap exists between the High Ambition Coalition and the U.S.? And what middle ground might be found between the coalition’s goals and the U.S. position that advocates for national action plans?

So, of course, the U.S. — of the Western and industrialized countries — is the primary holdout on that it should be more bottom-up and more Paris Agreement-like, you know, common goals but differentiated implementation. [U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Jose W. Fernandez on Friday] did not go away from that position but he very strongly underlined that they want an ambitious treaty and they want to support the process. Interestingly, there was an American event [on Friday morning] that I attended at the U.S. Embassy and then [Fernandez] came to our event, as the only non high-ambition country. He reiterated their core position but [also said] he agreed that we need a [draft] text. And that, I believe, was a positive move.

Norway’s petroleum and energy minister reportedly said the industry should leave no stone unturned in its pursuit for new hydrocarbon discoveries in the Arctic. Is there a contradiction between Norway essentially doubling down on fossil fuels while heading up the High Ambition Coalition on plastics?

Well, we also worked [at global COP27 climate summit] in Sharm-El Sheikh [last year] and will work [at COP28] in Dubai for an explicit agreement that we need to start phasing out unabated fossil fuels … because we do recognize that we need an energy transition away from fossil fuels.

Our argument is that this is not principally done by supply-side cuts. This is done by a systemic transition of our energy systems, which we are doing big time at home. There’s hardly anybody left buying fossil cars in my country, we’re also changing ferries and local shipping into fossil fuel-free alternatives.

Right now, Europe is clearly in need of gas to compensate for the loss of Russian gas. The war has accelerated Europe’s energy transition and it’s going to go faster. But there is still an increased interest in oil being produced in a Western country because they don’t want to go back to dependence on Russia.

[Ending fossil fuel use] is not done by a turn of a switch. [So] we prefer to focus on the consumption and the usage side, and to develop the [green] technologies that [will make] it unnecessary to burn fossil fuels.

We definitely do not want to be one of those fossil producers that try to block the transition, we would rather see the transition accelerated and we’ll find other things to do.

 

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