BUSAN, South Korea: The chairman of talks aiming for an international treaty to rein in pollution from plastics issued a document on Friday outlining measures that could furnish the basis of a pact, in an attempt to spur discussions as a Dec. 1 deadline approaches.
South Korea is hosting delegates from about 175 countries at the fifth and final meeting of the UN Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) to agree globally binding rules on plastics, but this week's talks had moved at glacial pace.
The document, issued by committee chair Luis Vayas Valdivieso and viewed by Reuters, featured ideas such as a global list of plastic products to be managed and a financial mechanism to help fund developing countries act on the treaty.
"The high and rapidly increasing levels of plastic pollution ... represent a serious environmental and human health problem," the document said.
It mentioned, but did not confirm, some of the most divisive tasks, such as whether the treaty will set a global target to cut output of primary plastic polymers or skip it altogether, and left undecided how rich nations would contribute to a fund.
"A global target to reduce plastic production is in (the document)," said Graham Forbes, who led the Greenpeace delegation to the talks.
"Keeping this in the final treaty text must be a redline for any country serious about ending plastic pollution."
The International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA) representing makers of plastic, backs governments' efforts to finalise the deal, said its spokesperson, Stewart Harris, adding that the body wanted to hasten a circular economy for plastics.
Nations which produce petrochemicals, such as Saudi Arabia, oppose efforts to cap plastic production, despite the protests of low- and middle-income nations that bear the brunt of plastic pollution.
While supporting an international treaty, the petrochemical industry has also been vocal in urging governments to avoid setting mandatory plastic production caps in favour of efforts to reduce plastic waste, such as recycling.
The chairman's move came after several participants had expressed frustration at the slow pace of the talks, amid disagreements over procedure, multiple proposals and some efforts to return to ground covered in the past.

THE HAGUE: The world’s top court will next week start unprecedented hearings aimed at finding a “legal blueprint” for how countries should protect the environment from damaging greenhouse gases — and what the consequences are if they do not.
From Monday, lawyers and representatives from more than 100 countries and organizations will make submissions before the International Court of Justice in The Hague — the highest number ever.
Activists hope the legal opinion from the ICJ judges will have far-reaching consequences in the fight against climate change.
But others fear the UN-backed request for a non-binding advisory opinion will have limited impact — and it could take the UN’s top court months, or even years, to deliver.
The hearings at the Peace Palace come days after a bitterly negotiated climate deal at the COP29 summit in Azerbaijan, which said developed countries must provide at least $300 billion a year by 2035 for climate finance.
Poorer countries have slammed the pledge from wealthy polluters as insultingly low and the final deal failed to mention a global pledge to move away from planet-heating fossil fuels.
The UN General Assembly last year adopted a resolution in which it referred two key questions to the ICJ judges.
First, what obligations did states have under international law to protect the Earth’s climate system from greenhouse gas emissions?
Second, what are the legal consequences under these obligations, where states, “by their acts and omissions, have caused significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment?“
The second question was also linked to the legal responsibilities of states for harm caused to small, more vulnerable countries and their populations.
This applied especially to countries under threat from rising sea levels and harsher weather patterns in places like the Pacific Ocean.
“Climate change for us is not a distant threat,” said Vishal Prasad, director of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) group.
“It is reshaping our lives right now. Our islands are at risk. Our communities face disruptive change at a rate and scale that generations before us have not known,” Prasad told journalists a few days before the start of the hearings.
Launching a campaign in 2019 to bring the climate issue to the ICJ, Prasad’s group of 27 students spearheaded consensus among Pacific island nations including his own native Fiji, before it was taken to the UN.
Last year, the General Assembly unanimously adopted the resolution to ask the ICJ for an advisory opinion.
Joie Chowdhury, a senior lawyer at the US and Swiss-based Center for International Environmental Law, said climate advocates did not expect the ICJ’s opinion “to provide very specific answers.”
Instead, she predicted the court would provide “a legal blueprint in a way, on which more specific questions can be decided,” she said.
The judges’ opinion, which she expected sometime next year, “will inform climate litigation on domestic, national and international levels.”
“One of the questions that is really important, as all of the legal questions hinge on it, is what is the conduct that is unlawful,” said Chowdhury.
“That is very central to these proceedings,” she said.
Some of the world’s largest carbon polluters — including the world’s top three greenhouse gas emitters, China, the United States and India — will be among some 98 countries and 12 organizations and groups expected to make submissions.
On Monday, proceedings will open with a statement from Vanuatu and the Melanesian Spearhead Group which also represents the vulnerable island states of Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands as well as Indonesia and East Timor.
At the end of the two-week hearings, organizations including the EU and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are to give their statements.
“With this advisory opinion, we are not only here to talk about what we fear losing,” the PISFCC’s Prasad said.
“We’re here to talk about what we can protect and what we can build if we stand together,” he said.