‘Existential challenge’: South Korea hosts final round of global plastic treaty talks

A final round of talks on a treaty to end plastic pollution opened on Monday, with the diplomat chairing the difficult negotiations urging nations to “meet an existential challenge”.

The meeting opens just hours after a chaotic end to the Cop29 climate talks in Baku, which agreed to a boost in climate funding that developing countries slammed as insufficient.

“This conference is about far more than drafting an international treaty,” Ecuadorian diplomat Luis Vayas Valdivieso told an opening plenary in South Korea’s Busan.

“It is about humanity rising to meet an existential challenge.”

Plastic pollution is so ubiquitous it has been found in clouds, the deepest ocean trenches and even human breastmilk.