U.S. Ocean Justice Organization, Azul, at INC-5 for Global Plastics Treaty Negotiations
For Immediate Release
Monday, November 25, 2024
Contact (Español/English):
media@azul.org
U.S. Ocean Justice Organization, Azul, at INC-5 for Global Plastics Treaty Negotiations
Busan, Republic of Korea (November 25, 2024) – Azul, a U.S.-based ocean justice organization working with Latinos in the U.S. and across the Americas to protect the ocean and coasts, will be in Busan to advocate for an ambitious, legally-binding global plastics treaty beginning Monday.
As the Biden-Harris Administration’s final weeks in governance near, Azul will continue to advocate to U.S. officials and global representatives for strong and ambitious action to end plastic pollution. Azul previously petitioned the U.S. Department of State to take a powerful stance against plastic pollution at home and abroad. (See the Azul letter, here).
Azul’s grassroots delegation, inclusive of the organization’s founder and executive director, Marce Gutiérrez-Graudiņŝ, and senior policy associate, Roland González Pizarro, will join observers from more than 175 countries at the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5), which kicks off November 25 through December 1. This fifth negotiating session aims for an ambitious, legally binding agreement to end plastic pollution, with the goal of establishing a treaty by the end of this year. Inclusive of INC-5, Azul – the grassroots powerhouse behind the iconic Deja el Plástico advocacy campaign, which first launched in 2012 in California – has participated in each of the previous global talks since they began in 2022.
At INC-5, leaders from across the world will work to reach a streamlined agreement that will propel us forward to solutions and mitigation of the plastic pollution, production, and waste management crisis.
“We call on U.S. leadership to meet this historic moment by taking action as a global leader and leading the charge towards a world free from plastics that place our communities and our future in the danger zone,” said Azul’s Founder and Executive Director Marce Gutiérrez-Graudiņš. ”For over a decade, Azul has worked tirelessly with ocean advocates and community leaders across the country for sensible plastic pollution solutions. According to the 2024 National Azul Poll, 75 percent of Latino voters across the country support creating a legally binding international treaty that aims to end plastic pollution, even if it means the U.S. may have to follow difficult and expensive rules. The health of our communities and the planet is at stake; it’s crucial that we get it right.”
“Plastic-bottled water allows governments to abdicate their responsibility to provide us with access to safe drinking water,” said Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega, a leading expert in environmental policy and public policy on water management and solid waste management and professor at the Laboratory of Methodology of the Latin American School of Social Sciences, or FLACSO, in Mexico. “The fact that there is consumption of bottled water in plastic is fundamentally the result of governments abdicating their obligation to provide sufficient quantities of water to society. We, as citizens, have to demand an active participation of governments in negotiations such as INC-5 and to hold them fully accountable, both in the governance of bottled water and in the governance of plastics.”
Azul partnered with Dr. Pacheco-Vega on Addressing Plastics from Bottled Water: Towards a Global Governance Framework, a policy brief released this week. Focused on the critical importance of the governance of bottled water to reduce plastic pollution and guarantee access to clean water as a basic human right, the brief highlights how the commodification of plastic bottled water has allowed governments to abdicate their responsibility of providing access to safe, clean drinking water. The brief also offers Azul’s essential plastic pollution policy recommendations, including the reduction of plastic production globally, as well as transparency standards for identifying and eliminating chemicals of concern across the plastics lifecycle. (For a full list of Azul’s proposed policy recommendations, see the brief, here.)
“We call on U.S. and world leaders to stand up for the ocean and the health of all our communities – especially those disproportionately affected – by committing to an ambitious agenda that disrupts the lifecycle of plastics and pollution that hurts communities of color the most,” said Azul’s Senior Policy Associate Roland González Pizarro.
González Pizarro continued, “The U.S. is the world’s top producer of plastic waste – it must support a legally-binding agreement to end plastic pollution that includes a list of families of the chemicals of concern to be phased out, repudiation of plastic credit as an adequate financial mechanism, a waste management regulation system that prevents waste hierarchy, non-voluntary enforcement of national action plans, the preservation of the fishing gear section, and accurate legal citation of prior environmental agreements on trade and waste management.”
Notably, in March 2021, just one year prior to UNEP adopting Resolution 5/14, which mandated the development of a global treaty to end plastic pollution, Azul and the United Nations Environment Programme released the report Neglected: Environmental Justice Impacts of Marine Litter and Plastics Pollution. The 66-page report, available in English and Spanish, has been a leading resource at plastic treaty talks as it details how plastic pollution disproportionately affects marginalized communities around the world – hindering the achievement of all 17 of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) across the entire plastic lifecycle, from production to waste disposal.
U.S. Latino voters strongly support the U.S. government doing more to prevent plastic pollution. In 2022, Azul’s first-ever U.S. Latinos and the Ocean Poll showed 86 percent of Latino voters believe plastic pollution will only worsen unless the U.S. government intervenes to curb – and earlier this year, the second such poll found that 88 percent of U.S. Latino voters would support doing more to prevent plastic pollution, with 86 percent believing that plastic pollution poses a health risk to their community.
Commissioned by Azul, Barreto Segura Partners (BSP) Research surveyed 2,500 registered Latino voters across the nation in 2024 and 1,900 in 2022, finding that Latino voters are willing to take action to protect the environment against plastic pollution, even at a personal cost.
Media availability: To schedule an interview with a member of the Azul delegation, see contact details above.
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Azul is a Latina-led organization working with communities to protect the ocean and coasts. Founded in 2011 to increase Latino participation in ocean conservation, Azul has long advocated for ocean justice and equity at the international and national levels, as well as in the state of California, where the organization is based.