INC-2 decides Open-Ended Working Group; may delay negotiations
UNEP negotiations for a Global Plastics Treaty. Photo: @andersen_inger / Twitter The story was updated late on May 30, 2023 to reflect latest developments
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has gathered in Paris, France, for the second meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-2).
The second agenda of the INC-2 was to adopt the rules of procedure. The latter half of the first day and the first half of the next in the meeting was spent discussing the draft rules to negotiate this.
The rules govern the following issues:
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At the Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) meeting in Dakar (May 2022), member states discussed a set of draft rules of procedure based on precedent in other negotiation processes to be fully adopted at INC-1.
A part of Rule 37 was kept “in brackets” in the INC-1 meeting in Uruguay in November 2022. An agreement could not be reached around it, which stated, “each member shall have one vote”.
The bracketed part has adopted the original voting rights of the Minamata Convention, which outlines how regional economic integration organisations like the European Union may be allowed to vote on behalf of their members.
The member states have provisionally agreed upon two alternatives in the INC-1, which highlights that the regional economic integration organisations may vote on behalf of their member states. However, the member states have to be present as a part of the committee or at the time of voting.
Also, some countries used the discussion on Rule 37 to challenge and propose to “add brackets” to Rule 38, which allows the adoption of decisions by voting, pushing for a process by consensus instead. This measure has been used to slow or even halt other environmental processes.
Voting has been crucial in the rules of procedure for other negotiations, including the Minamata and Montreal conventions. A process for voting after all efforts at consensus have been exhausted strengthens a negotiating body with effective decision-making rules and, therefore, must be maintained.
The most successful instruments in the world, like the Montreal Protocol and the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), have (only) voting and voting in the scenario of failure to reach a consensus, respectively.
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The Montreal Protocol has phased out nearly 100 kinds of chloro-fluoro carbons and related fluorinated gases by 98 per cent, an astonishing record by any measure.
The FCTC is the only international treaty negotiated under the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO-FCTC has also been instrumental in legal defences against the tobacco industry and has increased awareness of tobacco industry interference.
India has consistently insisted on bracketing Rule 38.1, which states, “The Committee shall make every effort to reach agreement on all matters of substance by consensus. If all efforts to reach consensus have been exhausted and no agreement has been reached, the decision shall, as a last resort, be taken by a two-thirds majority of the representatives of Members who are present and voting.”
Bracketing text in the rules of procedure means it is not final yet and can be opened for negotiations at the request of the member states.
India is supported by countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, Brazil, and China.
Countries against voting and in favour of deciding by consensus are: Saudi Arabia, India, Uganda, Iran, China, Russia, Brazil, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Cuba, Morocco, Argentina, Guatemala, Oman, Syria, UAE, Iran, Venezuala, Egypt and Kuwait.
Countries that are supportive of voting are: Senegal, Switzerland, EU, UK, Peru, Norway, Nigeria, Ecuador, United States, Canada, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Colombia, Chile, El Salvador, Eswatini, Congo, Republic of Korea, New Zealand, Rwanda, Cook Islands, Mexico, Paraguay, Antigua & Barbuda, Guinea Bassau, Indonesia, Dominica, Turkiye, Moldova and Israel.
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The other countries have either not made interventions or have an unclear position as of now.
It is hard to believe that the countries pushing for consensus do not realise that we have lost a lot of time because of trying to reach a consensus for adopting the rules of procedure. However, consensus does have a role to play to make the negotiation process as inclusive as possible.
More thought also needs to be put into ensuring that more member states, especially with limited resources, are bought into the negotiating room to ensure we do not leave anyone behind.
We should leverage the fact that multilateral environmental agreements that have been negotiated before and have shown considerable progress should be considered to save time and negotiate on the elements such as core obligations and implementation measures which are the lined up agenda items at the INC-2.
The committee finally decided to form an OEWG to deliberate on the issues regarding the rules of procedure. The OEWG will report back to the INC during a plenary session on its decisions.
The contact groups that were supposed to start their discussion in the second half of the day have not been able to start due to the OEWG. The possibility of the groups beginning to discuss substance is grim as of May 30.
This is a clear strategy of delaying the negotiations by a group of countries led by Saudi Arabia, which has sent one of the largest delegations of 29 after the USA and Japan, who have a delegation of 32 each at the INC-2.
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