At a Boston College conference that highlighted plastic pollution as a social justice crisis, participants presented a declaration to the United Nations advocating for a Global Plastics Treaty.
“We need to embrace a new approach that transforms our way of living in the world, our lifestyles, our relationship with the Earth’s resources, and generally how we look at humanity and all life,” the declaration reads. “Such an approach is essential if we wish to leave a habitable planet for our children, our children’s children, and the generations yet to come.”
The conference, “Joining Science and Theology to End Plastic Pollution, Protect Health, and Advance Social Justice,” was co-sponsored by the Minderoo Foundation, The Centre Scientifique de Monaco, and the MMHBO Fund at Schwab Charitable.
In addition to the approximately 85 faculty and researchers who participated in the conference, the declaration also garnered online signatures from the public.
In March of 2022, The UN agreed to draft an international, legally binding document to address the increasing trends of global plastic pollution.
Over the past two years, the UN has met five times for negotiations to finalize and officially adopt the Global Plastics Treaty into international law. The most recent round of negotiations took place in Busan, South Korea, from Nov. 25 to Dec. 1.
The delegates in Busan could not agree on the treaty’s terms, delaying negotiations into the new year.
In a statement to The Heights, David Wirth, a professor and dean’s distinguished scholar at Boston College Law School, said he hoped the failure to reach an agreement in Busan would be a minor setback for the treaty.
“The extremely disappointing outcome from the UN negotiations in Busan, the result of coordinated blocking behavior by special interests, is hopefully only a temporary setback,” Wirth wrote.
Despite the setback, the team at BC plans to look ahead to the “successful closure to this critical multilateral effort,” according to Wirth.
“The Boston College team working on this critical issue, including Dr. Landrigan and myself, intend to be fully involved when negotiations reconvene next year,” Wirth wrote.
The declaration urges UN treaty negotiators to recognize that current patterns of plastic production are unsustainable and cannot continue.
“Those who advocate for unchecked growth in plastics must re-examine their behavior, embrace the reality that the earth is a shared inheritance— a gift from the Creator, and work toward a more equitable and sustainable future,” the declaration reads.
Philip Landrigan, director of the global public health and the common good program and BC Global Observatory on Planetary Health, said the goal of the declaration was to bridge current scientific thought and religion, highlighting how plastic pollution is both a scientific and ethical crisis.
“We wanted to bring in the most current, up-to-date, scientific thinking about the health hazards of plastics,” Landrigan said. “And secondly, we wanted to bring in the voices of religious leaders of various different faith traditions to talk about, to offer their views on the meaning of plastic and plastic pollution.”
The declaration has received endorsements from key religious authorities including the Dalai Lama, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, and Rev. Mitchell Hescox, the president emeritus of the Evangelical Environmental Network.
Landrigans said the declaration targeted religious viewpoints to emphasize that the plastics crisis is both global and urgent.
“We need to involve scientists, of course, but we need to go beyond the scientific community, and I think the faith community has a lot to say here,” Landrigan said. “If you accept Pope Francis’ argument that the planet is a gift from God to humanity, then it follows that we have a responsibility to protect it.”
The Minderoo-Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health, a study developed at BC, found that plastic pollution is becoming a human health risk, causing disease, disability, and premature death through endocrine function, birth defects, premature births, infertility, and cancer.
The declaration also highlights how the plastics crisis disproportionately affects people of color, Indigenous communities, plastic and chemical production workers, and fossil fuel extractors, who face heightened health risks.
“The disproportionate exposures of these vulnerable populations are immoral,” the Declaration reads. “They are environmental injustices. They are violations of human rights.”
The declaration calls on the UN to include mandatory, binding limits on current plastic production, standardize chemicals used in making plastics, fully disclose their chemical properties and toxicity, and provide funding for low and middle-income countries to combat the plastics crisis.
Plastic products can be necessary, but overproduction of single-use plastic disproportionately harms the environment, Landrigan said.
“What we don’t need is a flood of single-use plastics—stuff that we use once and throw away,” Landrigan said. “It’s the most rapidly growing segment of plastic production.”
Although the last round of negotiations ended in another stalemate, Landrigan emphasized that a small number of nations are holding up the treaty, while the majority of UN delegates supported the Global Plastics Treaty.
“On the final day [of negotiations], they asked everybody who wanted a strong treaty to stand up, and something like 85 percent of the people in the room stood up and cheered,” Landrigan said.
Update (Dec. 9, 2024, 4:54 p.m.): This article was updated to include statements by David Wirth, law professor and dean’s distinguished scholar at Boston College Law School.
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