Rwanda and Peru have proposed a legally binding international treaty to reduce global plastic wastes.
Rwanda announced the proposal early this month in Geneva, Switzerland, during a conference organised by the United Nations for Environmental Program (UNEP).
With a focus on dangers posed by microplastics, the conference was attended by more than 1,000 representatives from 140 countries and non-governmental organisations.
During the conference, Rwanda expressed its concerns over the pollution caused by the 8.3 billion tonnes of plastic produced around the world since 1950.
It thus proposed the establishment of an intergovernmental negotiating committee to develop a legally binding international agreement to prevent and reduce environmental pollution by plastics.
The draft proposal is set to be discussed during the upcoming United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) scheduled from February 28 to March 2, 2022 in Nairobi, Kenya.
The project has already received a firm support of 25 states and the commitment of 50 others that still need a formal decision before joining.
Twenty-seven of the total seventy-five states are members of the European Union.
Berangere Abba, the French State Secretary in charge of biodiversity, called upon UN member states for a joint action to tackle the impacts of plastics use.
"Of course it might take longer…months or even years for the agreement to come into force, but without a joint international action and support to the initiative, we could have more plastics than fish in the world’s oceans by 2050,” he predicts.
According to UNEPI, some 300 million tons of plastic waste are produced annually and more than one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals die as a result of plastic pollution.
Experts weigh in
According to Abias Maniragaba, an Environmental Economics Lecturer at the University of Lay Adventists of Kigali (INILAK), the proposal was long overdue.
He is of the view that even if Rwanda has gone far in terms of banning the use of plastics, the country can’t be safe if other countries are still using them.
"Even though Rwanda has made a tremendous stride in phasing out single-use plastics, it can’t be safe if other countries are still using them because they can be smuggled inside its frontiers,” he explained.
Plastics and pollution are like a pandemic, he explains, no one is safe until everyone is safe.
"We actually neither have our own climate in Rwanda nor our own waters, when one sky is affected it contaminates another and when one waters are affected, they flow to other regions,” he added, citing that international treaties are needed during environmental matters.
The university don exemplifies the need for an international network with Mombasa waters which are mostly dirty because that is where most of the East African waters flow to, hence taking there all the mud.
Our efforts to talk to the Rwanda Environmental Management Authority officials who were among the proposal creators were futile by press time.