Kenya set on stamping out plastic pollution, says President Ruto
Delegates follow proceedings during negotiations to develop a global and legally binding instrument on plastic pollution at the Unep headquarters in Nairobi on November 13, 2023.
President William Ruto has affirmed Kenya’s commitment to ending plastic pollution.
Speaking during the opening of the third session of the inter-governmental negotiating committee on ending plastic pollution, at the United Nations Environmental Programme (Unep) headquarters in Nairobi yesterday, President Ruto said Kenya has lived by example by establishing a number of legislations and directives to curb the influx of plastics.
“We demonstrated this commitment with the ban on the manufacture and use of polythene bags in 2017, followed closely in 2020 with a ban on single-use plastics in protected areas such as national parks, forests and beaches.”
“Further, in July 2022, Kenya enacted the Sustainable Waste Management Act which made our country the first in the world to subject all products, including plastics, to extended producer responsibility,” Dr Ruto said.
Every year, almost 400 million tonnes of plastic waste are produced globally, with 0.5 per cent of this waste finding its way into the ocean. Experts estimate that, by 2060, more than a billion tonnes of plastic will be generated globally.
An estimated 22,000 of waste is generated in Kenya per day, and about 20 per cent of it is plastic. Data indicates that up to 1.3 million of plastic becomes waste in the country.
“This kind of pollution of our environment is unacceptable and is essentially an existential threat to life,” President Ruto said, calling on the negotiators to make this stop.
Last year, during the United Nations Environmental Assembly 5.2, 170 nations agreed to launch negotiations towards a globally binding instrument. The scope of the instrument was supposed to clearly reflect the requirement of Resolution 5/14 of the United Nations Environment Assembly, including ending plastic pollution across the full life cycle of all plastics and addressing its effects on human health and the environment, and especially on the marine ecosystem.
According to President Ruto, the global community is waiting with great anticipation for the instrument that will be developed by the committee to chart a global plan for tackling plastic pollution.
“This anticipation is heightened by the zero draft, and it is the shared belief of many that this third session presents an opportunity for the draft to be converted into a plan.”
The zero draft, he said, serves as a rallying call for global collective action to protect the planet through various interventions such as less manufacture of plastics, elimination of problematic and short-lived plastics, investment in solid waste management policies and a “just transition”.
President Ruto challenged investors, multinational corporations and technology companies to shift strategic investments to reduce their plastics waste footprint, and at the same time called upon producers and innovators to rethink plastic products and packaging, “to reflect the principles of reuse, refill, repair and re-purpose by exploring alternative options such as non-plastic substitutes, alternative plastics and plastic products that do not have negative environmental, health and social impacts.”
He urged member States to support the proposal by the African Ministerial Conference on Environment for the Unep headquarters in Nairobi to be the host of the Secretariat for the Plastics Convention, a move he said, will strengthen Unep as one of the few United Nations agencies headquartered in the Global South. Since its inaugural session in 2014, the United Nations Environment Assembly (Unea) has seen progressively stronger calls to take action to stop the ever-increasing problem of pollution from plastics.
This is why in 2022, after declaring plastic pollution and waste a global crisis, and a common concern of humankind that requires global and urgent solutions.
The fifth assembly of Unea, which was christened Unea 5.2, established an intergovernmental negotiating committee (INC) with a mandate to negotiate a new legally binding global agreement to address pollution from plastics in all environments and in all forms.
“Such an agreement should include time-targeted, measurable, and binding commitments with effective enforcement mechanisms and be predicated on human rights and full enforcement of the polluter pays principle,” the assembly said, after which it adopted the draft resolutions to end plastic pollution, a move that was lauded by Kenya.
