175 countries are meeting in South Korea all week to decide the future of plastic production in the world. And there is no consensus on the question. For Corsica, one of the two most polluted islands in the most polluted sea on the globe, the stakes are high.
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Annually, the 22 countries bordering the Mediterranean produce 24 million pieces of plastic waste. These are the alarming figures published by WWF which carried out a large study on this subject in 2018.
And more than 600,000 tonnes, neither buried, nor incinerated, nor recycled, pollute the seabed each year. 247 billion pieces of plastic are currently floating in the Mediterranean, according to World Wildlife Fund, which speaks of“a torrent of plastic”.
Since this study, several years old, nothing has really changed. As such, in 2023, theIfremer, the organization responsible for monitoring the state of health of the marine environment, recalled that there are 40 times more micro-waste floating in the Mediterranean than in the Bay of Biscay.
It is, according to WWF, the most polluted sea in the world.
Plastic waste on a Mediterranean beach.
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© BOUTRIA LUC / MAXPPP
Corsica, again according to WWF, would be the island most affected by this pollution, with Crete.
The consequences on marine fauna and flora of this pollution are widely known and documented.
However, nothing significant has been done to reverse this trend.
Suffice it to say that, for the shores of Corsica, as for the rest of the world, the stakes of the conference which opened Monday, November 25 in South Korea, are important.
Delegates from 175 countries have gathered for a final round of negotiations in the hope of reaching a global treaty to help tackle plastic pollution.
The problem is that the position of the States regarding the position to adopt is far from aligned.
A demonstration for the environment and the reduction of plastic production in the world is being held in front of the premises where the intergovernmental committee working on the issue is meeting.
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© YONHAP / YNA
Two camps clash:
- The one that is sometimes referred to as HAC, or coalition of high ambitions. It brings together around sixty STATES, including those of the European Union. And they advocate for a strong solution, which does not only focus on collection and recycling issues, but which would take “the problem at the root”according to the expression used by Agnès Pannier-Runacher, French Minister of Ecological Transition. This would notably involve rethinking the very design of plastics, to facilitate their recycling.
- The second camp intends to avoid excessively heavy constraints, and would prefer to simply repeat the usual commitments on waste management. Unsurprisingly, it is led by states which are major producers of oil, one of the raw materials used for the manufacture of plastic.
At the end of a not really daring Cop 29, observers make no secret of their doubts about a consensus at the end of a week of discussions on which there is also significant uncertainty, while two heavyweights, the The United States and China have not yet made their position known on the subject.
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