Amid all the heated exchanges over constitutional and political matters here in the past few days, a most important global meeting opened yesterday in Ottawa, Canada, the outcome of which will have implications for our environment protection efforts.

Negotiators from 175 nations began talks at the fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution.

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

However, while there is broad consensus on the need for a treaty, environmental activists pleading for a 75 per cent cut in plastic production by 2040 are at odds with oil-producing nations and the plastics industry.

Experts tell us that annual plastics production has more than doubled in 20 years to 460 million tonnes, and is on track to triple within four decades.

According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, only nine per cent of the plastics produced is recycled, and its contribution to global warming could more than double by 2060, having already accounted for 3.4 per cent of global emissions in 2019.

Plastic pollution is found everywhere, from mountaintops to ocean depths. Experts have told us that fish, lobster, crab, and other seafood are being increasingly contaminated by such pollution and, quite surprisingly, some scientists have advanced that plastic pollution can be found in human blood and breast milk.

Here in Jamaica a ban on plastics, which took effect on January 1, 2019, has seen some measure of success, but more needs to be done in the areas of monitoring and enforcement of the law.

Sustained public education, we suggest, should have some impact on people’s attitude to plastics which Canada’s Environment Minister Mr Steven Guilbeault correctly states, have created a reliance on disposable consumer culture.

“We’re here today because we recognise that we must throw away this throwaway generation,” Mr Guilbeault is quoted as saying at the opening of the Ottawa talks.

“We must acknowledge that we can’t choose between recycling, banning or innovation. We have to do all three,” he said.

We don’t disagree, for we have seen the enormous damage that plastics have done to our country and the planet in general. Not only does it ‘uglify’ our physical spaces, it blocks drains, worsening episodes of flooding, and can lead to the pooling of water which eventually becomes stagnant, creating breeding sites for mosquitoes — purveyors of deadly diseases.

While there is deep division over this issue, we hope that coming out of the Ottawa talks — which are scheduled to run for a week — governments will be able to agree on a legally binding treaty that addresses not just how plastics are discarded, but also how much plastic is produced and how it is used.

Experts have said any such treaty could become the most significant pact to address global climate-warming emissions since the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Mr Luis Valdivieso, chair of the negotiations, put it very well: “The world is counting on us to deliver a new treaty that will catalyse and guide the actions and international cooperation needed to deliver a future free of plastic pollution. Let’s not fail.”