Crusaders against plastic face a familiar foe: Big Oil

Janice Taga is a coral reef ecologist on a mission.
Hailing from the Pacific island nation of Fiji, she is determined to save her country’s reefs from the global scourge of plastic pollution. It’s a matter of survival, she says.
“It is a shock for you to see it in remote areas, especially when there’s not a lot of people or development around,” Taga told POLITICO by phone from one of her diving expeditions. She routinely finds everything from plastic bottles to rice sacks littering the reefs.
Like other small island developing states (SIDS), Fiji relies heavily on the ocean economy but suffers disproportionately from plastic pollution. Teetering landfills and noxious fumes from incinerating the trash have become the norm in a land lacking the infrastructure to safely manage it — constituting a human health hazard.
“We in the Pacific, we are largely connected to the land and to the ocean. That’s our identity and our history is mostly tied with the ocean,” said Taga. “I think once we lose that, we also lose our identity as well, and our culture.”
Now Fiji — alongside its fellow small island states — is turning to United Nations talks in Busan, South Korea this week, hoping countries can hammer out a deal that stems the worsening pollution crisis. Only 28 percent of the plastic waste on Fiji’s shores is locally produced, according to one study. The rest floats in from as far away as Peru, Nicaragua and South Africa — and now, environmentalists say, it’s time for the world to take collective responsibility.
But not everyone sees plastic as the problem. For many countries and industries, plastic is precious. It is a lifeline to oil producers nervously expecting demand for oil to dry up as the world slowly switches to electric modes of transport. It has become integral to critical industrial applications like transportation and health care. And it is a $100-billion sector sustaining chemical and plastic manufacturers worldwide.
“We need to keep our eyes on the prize: It’s ending plastic pollution, it’s not ending plastic production,” Chris Jahn, president and CEO of the American Chemistry Council — whose members include industry giants like Dow, Chevron Phillips Chemical and ExxonMobil — told reporters ahead of the U.N. talks. “There’s some unintended consequences that could come from reducing plastic production. And so they have consequences for people, and they have consequences for the planet.”
While green groups and ambitious countries argue the only way to really halt plastic pollution is to go to the source and put limits on production, the oil and petrochemical industry is in Busan en masse to lobby against a deal that imposes any such limits — backed by oil-producing nations Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Such a treaty should aim to reduce global levels of plastic production and provide proper financing for sustainable solutions, argues Fiji’s chief negotiator Senimili Nakora Baleicakau.
“Any country that is using the negotiations to push for the continuous ‘business as usual’ scenario has no moral ground on human rights, human health [or] health of the environment,” said Fijian marine ecotoxicology expert Rufino Varea.
They’re not alone in that fight. Allies include the European Union, Norway, Peru, Rwanda and some forty other countries. But they have formidable rivals in oil-rich and plastic producing countries desperate to protect a $100-billion industry.
Twelve percent of global oil demand came from the petrochemical sector in 2018, according to the International Energy Agency. By 2050, it could capture 55 percent of crude oil demand. Tanya Vetter, vice president of strategy and planning for ExxonMobil Product Solutions, has said her company expects petrochemical demand to grow 40 percent by 2030 and double by 2050.
A coalition of oil-rich countries including Saudi Arabia and Iran says a treaty must respect the “sovereign right of States to exploit their own resources,” who argue that their economies, too, are in jeopardy. Plastics are “fundamental materials for sustainable economic growth,” they say, and a successful treaty should address waste management measures only.
In short, plastics don’t pollute — people do.
Oman has warned that sweeping measures negatively impacting the plastic industry would cause “significant harm to our economies and societies.” Iran argued the treaty “should not constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination or a disguised restriction on international trade in particular against the strive of the developing countries.”
There’s an army of plastic industry lobbyists in Busan to back them up — so many of them that nine EU and United States lawmakers, including Renew group member of the European Parliament Pascal Canfin and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, have sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, warning there’s a disproportionate number of petrochemical lobbyists attending the talks. 
But small island states don’t see why they should suffer for the prosperity of others — even if there is a `$700-billion industry at stake.
“You hear about the resistance to reduce plastic production from the oil producing economies, and how important oil use is to them,” said Dennis Clare, a legal adviser to the negotiating team of Micronesia. “Talking about potentially devastating the economy: If the fisheries are no longer viable — not to mention it’s the source of food for the population — then [small island developing states] would suffer as well.”
But it’s hard to draw a clear dividing line between “pro-plastic” and “anti-plastic” countries.
Fiji, for example, is still evaluating a push from countries including the EU, for global bans on certain kinds of plastic products. For all the damage plastic pollution is doing to small island developing states, plastic products and packaging are still integral to their way of life.
While some countries might find it easier to pivot away from some “unnecessary” plastic products, this may be more challenging for SIDS, said Carla Worth, a policy lead at Common Seas. That’s due to small market sizes, isolated locations and being “mainly import-driven economies with limited production on-island.”
“What we’re asking for in the treaty is flexibility as well, if this is going to come into force, flexibility in terms of us addressing and complying with with the requirement,” said Baleicakau, the Fijian negotiator. The country needs time, as well as technical and financial assistance to implement such measures, she adds.
While some plastic applications are problematic and could be replaced, Europe’s plastic lobby said in a statement, plastics are “in many respects irreplaceable from a functional perspective and they will continue to serve a wide range of economic and societal needs, many of which will increase over the coming years.”
But Varea, the marine ecotoxicology expert, doesn’t buy that line. “When you’re talking about the goods that plastics have served for us in this world, it still does not outweigh the harm, the impact, the socioeconomic issues, the human health issues and rights violations that it has resulted in,” he said.
Taga, for her part, is hoping countries can make some sacrifices for Fiji’s gain — and cultural survival.
“If [certain countries] could help us by reducing their plastic production, it will help us protect our home,” she said.
Jordan Wolman contributed reporting.