 So many people have been speaking about the climate crisis. So many things have been put on paper. But the real question is why is it that we're still not acting at the scale and speed that is necessary? The extreme weather events that the scientists have long connected to the climate crisis are becoming far more frequent and far more destructive. For 150 years, we've built up a world based on the assumption that we can exploit the planet for free and it translates to very dramatic impacts happening right as we speak. The climate crisis is a threat multiplier, which means it exacerbates existing inequities in our society. The impacts are felt most deeply by black, indigenous and communities of color. We're living through an explosion of inequality. We need to remember we're on the same planet and this is the planet that we need to make sustainable for the whole of humanity. Climate change is impacting food security as well as political stability in many nations around the world. Five years ago, there were 80 million people marching towards starvation. That number jumped to 135 million. What caused the jump? It was a man-made conflict like in Ukraine compounded with climate shocks. No one is as vulnerable to climate change as farmers are. If you talk about transformation, the first thing they want to know is what must I do on my farm? We know that this transition will require a fast adoption of a lot of new technologies and the question today is how to find the appropriate way to find this technology. To put a number around it, it's an extra of two and a half to three trillion dollars a year of additional finance that we have to find in order to get those emissions down. Financial institutions have a lot of roles to play to bring the advice and provide the financing to make these transitions happen. Younger generations are demanding a sense of purpose. They want to look at companies and say, I am investing with you all for this reason. With the upcoming two cops taking place in Africa and the Middle East, we have this tremendous opportunity to put emerging markets at the forefront of our collective response to climate change. Being for international treat has to be part of the solution. How do we all get together to talk about a global carbon price that can guide us and help us to decarbonize the world? The solutions are there. What we need is governments to regulate, to invest, and we need business to act with values. History will look at us, people, politicians, corporate leaders. These times require not only solutions but speed. There is nowhere else to look than the mirror. We are the ones that need to do this. Hello everyone. I'm Catherine Boudreau, Insider's Senior Sustainability Reporter. In March of this year, 175 countries struck a historic agreement to negotiate a global plastics treaty. This was described as the most significant round of climate diplomacy since the Paris Agreement in 2016. Only 9% of plastic ever gets recycled. The rest ends up in landfills or enters the environment. Some 8 million metric tons of plastic enters the ocean every year according to the UN. This harms marine life, public health, and it also exacerbates the climate crisis because plastics are made of fossil fuels. The framework agreed to at the UN Environment Assembly outline the scope of a plastics treaty, including that it would be legally binding, cover the full life cycles of plastic, and also that it would finance developing nations who want to invest in infrastructure and technology so that they can help solve this problem. Since then, Norway and Rwanda have launched a high-ambition coalition. This is a group of countries that are working together ahead of the first round of negotiations in Uruguay in November. I'm joined by two of the leaders of this coalition. Jean-Doc is the Rwandan Minister, Environment Minister, and Espen Barlaida is the Norway's Environment Minister. Thank you both for being here. So I'll just start by asking how many countries are involved in this coalition right now and what are you aimed to achieve? And Jean-Doc, maybe I'll start with you. Currently we have 27 countries that join the coalition and we look forward to more countries to join the coalition because plastic pollution is a planetary crisis that everyone should be motivated to fight. So we look forward to have more members joining. What is the ambition of this coalition? Well, you know, as you very correctly said, the world came around in Nairobi in March to agree on a very solid mandate for negotiations towards a legally binding treaty that will deal with the entire lifespan of plastics. Not because we want rid of plastic, but we want to have a more responsible relationship to this man-made product, which is so useful, but also so harmful if it leaks into nature. And that means we need to look into how we produce plastics to take hazardous materials out of it, to make sure we produce plastic that can be recycled. The IE is recyclable, but also that we collect and recycle and use again and try to avoid the leakage to nature. So this is a mandate that the entire world agreed on in March. And then what Shendak Madhya Mavaria, the minister of Rwanda and myself are doing is that we co-chair a high-ambition coalition to support that work. So the mandate is already there, but you always need somebody to bring it forward, to remember what we now call the spirit of Nairobi, of this great meeting so that we move towards a very successful outcome because after all what was agreed in the UN Environmental Assembly is still just a mandate to negotiate. We still have to do the negotiations. So we will be like stewards of this process and trying to make sure that we keep to our promises and make sure that the treaty is as solid as it should be. And how would you define high ambition? And you know, is there certain criteria that is required to enter this working group? Yeah, high ambition. It means that as you know, every journey starts by one step. So we had to get that momentum after Nairobi and to make sure that what we said in Nairobi, what we decided in Nairobi is implemented and somebody has to take the flag of that decision. And motivate other members of the society. And that was Rwanda and Nairobi that decided to be the flag bearers of that coalition. To make sure that we are not only ambitious, we are highly ambitious. To make sure that the negotiations to the treaty start and start with different members of the community, be different members of the society. And being high ambitious should start from home. Start from home for us to be able to have that leadership responsibility and moral responsibility to involve other members. Because with this plastic pollution crisis, you cannot only be ambitious, you have to be highly ambitious to be able to curb this. It is a pandemic. When you see what plastic pollution is doing to the lives of our people, because when we talk about environment, we talk about people. When we are told by scientists that by 2050 we will have more plastic in the ocean than fish, everyone should be highly ambitious to end plastic pollution. So for us, Rwanda, Norway and other 25 members that have joined until today, we look forward really to have a world without plastic pollution by 2040. And 2040 is in the corner. We are in 2022. It is only 18 years left. So we have to be very, very ambitious so that in two years we will have the treaty. But we should not wait for the treaty. We should now start home, back home, and do something to curb plastic pollution. Rwanda has started. Norway has started. Other countries have started. We have to keep pushing and motivate the raw, ambitious countries to be highly ambitious. Yeah, you said that this work starts at home. So I'm going to ask both of you what each of your countries are doing right now about the plastic pollution issue. Yeah, Rwanda has banned plastic curry bags already 18 years ago. So in 18 years ago, we don't have plastic curry bags in Rwanda. And that has created jobs, green jobs for our community. Women cooperatives for weaving and youth cooperatives to produce alternative form of packaging has seen the change in the way people do business. And two years ago, we have banned single-use plastics like plastic bottles. And we have, we start with our private sector to make sure that we change the packaging of water, juice, and soon the government of Rwanda will enact a decree putting up environmental review for imported product in the plastic. So for Rwanda now, plastic pollution or plastic use in different, different domain that we can do without plastic is already history. And we will keep pushing because plastic pollution is transcontinental and international problem that if you, you avoid plastic pollution in your country, your neighbor, if they don't do anyway, it will come to your country. So we have to keep pushing. But back home, we are better off. Thank you. Yes, first I have to say Rwanda is a true leader because they were really ahead of all of us. So we're learning from Uganda, I think many of us. We have done quite well on plastic bottles. We still have plastic bottles, but you can be certain that if you buy one, it's made from a former bottle. It's already recycled. And the system of collecting plastic bottles is very effective and they are fed back into the plastic bottle chain. So there's very little leakage from that particular product. We have fees on plastic bags. We're looking into whether we will increase them and significantly reduce the amount of plastics bag. And we have separation in most Norwegian homes, people actually separate plastic waste from other waste. So that is collected for recycling or at least sort of separate treatment afterwards. We are right now because we are in this coalition, we're looking into more measures that we will do at home as well because Jean-Darck is so right that all this has to start at home in addition to working on the international standards. And one of the things we just agreed in this coalition meeting that we had a few minutes ago is to have a kind of a repository, a catalog of national initiatives so that countries who want to do the right thing but don't know exactly what that is can look at each other's experiences and learn about what different countries have done because there are many routes to the same outcome but the outcome has to be very clear. It is to end the waste of plastic into nature so that all the plastic we use is designed from the very start to be recycled and actually is being recycled back into the system. So this is one of the things we will do as a coalition. Yeah, I'm glad that you mentioned the meeting this morning because I know this was the first meeting of the High Ambition Coalition. So beyond what you just mentioned, what else did you think this meeting accomplished? Well, I think all the 27 countries that are in the coalition who are, I have to say, from all parts of the world. I mean, we have Asian countries, many African countries, Latin American countries, European countries, all parts of the globe is represented. So we have quite a good group of people with different experiences, different levels of the economic development, different outlooks on other issues, but who agree on this. And this is a process that has been very much driven by countries in the South. This is not something that is invented in the North and then pushed on our friends in Africa, Latin America. It's rather the other way around. It was Peru and Rwanda who proposed the most ambitious draft. And this is actually the draft that we worked on and agreed as a world. And that's a quite important point because sometimes I think in parts of the world it's seen as if it's some Northern country that comes up with an idea and tries everybody to come along. It's the other way around here. But what do we do together? Well, we all agree that it should be a whole life cycle treaty. Some people in the beginning talk about eliminating marine litter. That's a very good cause. But the thing is plastic doesn't start in the ocean. It ends in the ocean. So you need to go to the source and find out where it comes from, how they did get there, how they did leak into nature in the first place. So you have to look at the source, the production, the usage styles, they try to reduce and eventually phase out single use plastics, for instance. Otherwise it will always leak into nature. And the other one is that we want this treaty to have a legally binding element. We're still working on exactly what should be legally binding at the international level and what should be, you know, where we allow for national adaptation. But at least there must be an obligation to create national action plans and to report on how you are moving forward so that we can compare each other's behavior in this area. And why? Well, because it's such an international problem. I was recently in Spitzburg in the very, very north of Norway. So I have several hours flying from the northern coast of Norway where there is hardly any human presence. Only a few thousand people live there and they're all very environmentally conscious. You still find a lot of plastics because it might have come from Asia or from America, but it still ends up there and everywhere else. It's just an example everywhere you go. So you cannot really solve why both of us agree that you have to start at home. The solution also has to be global. And we need to commit each other to helping each other in order to take away this very serious threat. Plastics are literally everywhere on the highest mountain top, the deepest sea and also in us. So when I was president of UNEA, I tested my own blood and we found traces of nanoplastics and also something called Eftalets which has been used historically to soften plastics. And so I have been drinking from bottles or drinking water with this and I have it in my blood. And if I have it, you probably have it too. And I think this is an emerging field of research too. We don't exactly know what the impact of that is, the fact that we have this in our bloodstream, correct? But we know it's not good. Yeah. For instance, we already know that it reduces male fertility, which I tell that to some men and they get very concerned, very interested in. This will motivate them to join the cause. But for us, we know the impact already in our lives. Before we banned plastic curry bugs, as you know, Rwanda is a cattle keeper country and we live on agriculture. So you could see every day we were losing our cattle. We were losing our cattle because of ingestion of plastics, curry bugs, in nature. So we decided whatever we do, it should be people-centered policy, people-centered program. So we started correcting those plastic waste from the nature. As you know, in Rwanda, every last Saturday of the month, we have community work. Or the people who are 18 years old, we go out on the street to clean the street. To clean the nature. To make sure there is no littering. So it started from there. We were losing our cattle. Water was not able to penetrate. So we were seeing our fertilizers that we have used on our different agriculture activities. Washed by the rain. Because the water cannot penetrate. So we decided to burn plastic curry bugs. And you had to see, after we cleaned all the waste, plastic waste from the nature, you had even to see how the tourist industry has boomed. We have seen a flow of tourists coming through Rwanda. Because Rwanda, we have no winter. We have the average temperature in our country is 21 degrees in January. And you can see that, that itself has attracted people to come through Rwanda. Because it is safe, it is clean. The air quality is clean. I mean, is livable. So we have seen the flow of tourists coming just even to appreciate the cleanliness of the country. Throughout the country, not only in the city of Kigari, but inside the country. You can't see people littering. You can't see plastic waste on the street. But you can see plastic littering on the border of our country with other countries. As I said, it is a transnational crisis we have to fight. But those are the experiences I want to share with you. When a country has no littering, has no plastic pollution, you don't have even a lot of carbon emission. Because when you avoid plastic pollution, there is emission you are avoiding. So heat wave also is reduced on your site. Those are the experiences I want to share with you. If I may just add that Rwanda has inspired other African countries because I think now there are more than 20 African countries that have banned or made some kind of ban on single use plastics. And then you can actually see it. So if you walk around in Kigali, it's a different experience from walking in New York. I mean, it won't take me many seconds when I go out to the door before I find plastic waste. But you will not in the Aksaham country. And that's because of politics. You mentioned that this is a transnational issue. So I had to ask, the US is the largest producer of plastic waste and are they involved in this high ambition coalition? So the US is not a member of the coalition, but the US was very actively present, very supportive as we move towards the agreement in Nairobi. I spoke to Assistant Secretary Monica Medina who's in charge of these issues in the US government yesterday and many times before, but at last as yesterday. And she reiterated her strong commitment to an agreement. And then of course, in the US, there's parts of the US politics are less enthusiastic about the international treaties than Rwanda and Norway are. So we might have to, they have not joined our particular coalition, but it should not be understood as a lack of interest from the US government because I mean, that commitment to helping to get the good outcome I think is very solid and strong. But there are issues about what that instrument will be, which has to do with certain attitudes to international regulation, which still dominates the US discourse. It is even an opportunity for New York to push during the treaty because when I arrived here, I was so astonished to see how much plastic waste on the road. For me, I was just like a dream. Am I dreaming? Am I in the US? So, but as Melissa Burt is saying, we have to run from each other. That's why the coalition is there to get experiences, to get insight from each and every minister, each and every member of the coalition, technical coalition is there also. So, we will run from others. And I mean, in this country, it's not only this country, but this country, quite often you're exposed to, you have a breakfast in a hotel and it's actually served on a plastic plate with plastic spoons and forks and plastic cups. That's simply not necessary. It's relatively easy to have, you know, cutlery that you can wash and use again. And this is an example of a relatively easy transition to a less plastic-intensive economy. So you can see even here this little plastic. This is okay. Well, the economy forum has glass, so yeah. Well, you all are working on an ambitious timeline. The goal is to get this treaty done by 2024, correct? So, I guess where do you see the major sticking points, the major opposition? Where do you see that coming from? I think when we gathered, nobody was against the treaty. I think by the time we continue with discussion, we will discuss with private sector, we will hear from the private sector because people in private sector are also our partners. But from the discussions we had, we didn't have any single opposition on the treaty. But how, the how is the issue? The how we are going to implement the treaty is the issue, but we have discussion. Even the private sector can find another opportunity to create alternative packaging, and it is possible. Especially countries that have resources should really find alternative packaging. If Rwanda could do with retail, so how about those who have more resources? Yes, and I think I agree with Min Srimocheva Maria's point here. There were very few people coming up against having a treaty, but the devil's in the details, as we know. It's always the nitty gritty details that now will have to be negotiated. And I think there was a perception by many governments that business would be skeptical. My perception is rather on the contrary. I'm sure you find a company or two that are skeptical, but the vast majority of companies we speak to, and by the way, the World Economic Forum is a good partner in convening them, says, you're right, we want to be part of this. We know we were a part of the problem, we want to be part of the solution, we want to look into the future. It's how we know about plastic, we make plastic, we use plastic, but we can do it in a much more sustainable way. We can produce for recycling. We can have containers that are reused rather than thrown away every time. So you go into this reduced reuse and recycle principle. So I feel that there's much more support on the private side, on the commercial side, that maybe we even dare to dream about a few years ago. And I think it should be said the treaty is not there, but the signal is very clear. 175 countries, effectively the whole world, that's all the members of the UN Environmental Assembly have said there will be a treaty. And that means the company board knows that. You don't know exactly what it says, but it's clearly not going to be supportive of single use or hazardous material in plastic, so just get rid of it now. Start planning, start working as if, and try to be a winner of the future rather than try to cling to a past which is going away anyway. And that I think is happening. And I really want to shout out that point to the private sector. There's a lot of good leadership there. Yeah, just yesterday a business coalition launched of more than 80 businesses. And it spanned a lot of different sectors. Finance, for example, also the big retailers and brands that we all know like PepsiCo or Unilever. So I guess why is it so important to bring the business sector along? Like what will they, how will they help the treaty get to the finish line? No, it is very important to bring the private sector on table because they are part of the problem. So they have to be part of the solution. And because they should understand, yes, there are things you can do without plastic. But there are things we may not do without plastic. But how are we going to be related to the nature so that the product we cannot do without plastics are not the origin of the waste in the nature? So private sector is a key because they are partners to the development of each country. So they will be key to discussions. And they will be key to solutions. And of course the industry may be affected, but for short time because the problem, if we don't solve this problem, we will sink together with the private sector. So that's why we have to find solutions together. I think it's easy when you think here about plastics, you might think about containers and bottles. But it's also, for instance, cosmetics. There's been a lot of use of microplastics in cosmetic products and creams. Now the key leading cosmetic producers are now taking that microplastics out. Why do we use it? Because the creams are easier to put on the face and so on. But now they're dealing with this because this is a very bad idea. Microplastic is the worst form of plastic because you can't see it. You can detect it with technical equipment. But a plastic bottle, after all, you can pick it up and take it away. But all these micro and nano in clothes, in synthetic clothing, there's a lot of plastics. And people don't think about that as plastic product, but it is. And when you wash it, it's great, very practical products and rainwear and so on. But then when you wash it in the washing machine, it eventually leaks microplastics and nanoplexics into nature. So it's a broad specter of businesses that are now waking up to this and looking into their own business model and seeing how can we reduce and eventually maybe get rid of the plastic component of these products or make sure that they are much more sustainable that they traditionally wear. One reflection I think of is my grandparents didn't know about plastics. It came when my parents were young. It was invented before, but really at the volume in the 60s. And it's been there in throughout my life. But it's a recent human-made product. And so this is a totally man-made problem. But if it's a man-made problem, it can also be solved by men and women. Because it's something we put in there, we humans. And we also need to be much more conscious about the way we deal with the planet. And a sustainable, effective economy of growth and welfare requires a much better partnership between us and human beings and the nature that surrounds us. And that is not only politicians speaking. A lot of companies are seeing this. A lot of business leaders, investors, banks, and of course civil society organizations are seeing that. And it lends itself very well to what we call a multi-stakeholder approach. Because you need governments to make a treaty, but you need academia, you need business, you need a civil society to shape that environment in which a good treaty can come up. Yeah, I noticed in the High Ambition Business Coalition that I would say that some of the big petrochemical companies, for example, they weren't members. That doesn't mean that they don't support a treaty because I believe in March when you were striking this agreement on the framework, they were supportive. But I guess I'm just wondering what you see as their role and how will they, I guess, what will their presence be like in these negotiations? Well, I very much hope they, I mean, these people know quite a bit about plastics because they make much of the plastic they are made from petroleum. So, first they have knowledge to bear. And as we keep saying, we're not saying that we're going to face all use of plastic. I mean, the plastic is actually practically, plastic is also the stuff inside your car. And you can probably replace it with bamboo or something else but it's not practical and it's not necessarily an environmental approval as long as that type of steady, long-term use of plastics is part of a recyclable chain. So, there's no particular reason they should be against this and many reasons they should be supportive also because they are anyway, you know, in an increasingly climate-aware society, they are already aware that they need to have good answers to their business model overall. If you're in the petroleum sector, I think many of them, the decent companies in this community actually want to be partners. There will be less use of primary plastics if you recycle more but there will still be some. Yeah, to add on what Bert is saying, they should also invest in research and development to see how they can replace plastic in their factories, how they can better be connected to the nature. So, if they invest in research and development and technology, for sure they will find solutions and they will be part of the solution. My one last question is, I think something significant about the framework in March was that it recognized the role of informal waste workers. So, can you just speak to their recognition, like the fact that they are recognized and also what role they'll play as the negotiations continue? So, there are an estimated, believe it or not, 20 million people who in one way or the other work on landfills and dumps as waste pickers. Many women, by the way, men and women, but they are now increasingly organized. So, they were actually, and I was very proud of that as a president in the UN and the UN Environmental Assembly, they were actually in the negotiation, they were there at the table and we listened to them. What they are saying is that, of course, we need to regulate this better, but don't forget us on the way, because when new solutions are found, that they can also be part of that transition, that just transition into a smarter plastic economy, because much of what they do is to pick up plastics, try to manually and take them to local stores that are trying to get some new use and this has to be done in a better way in the future, but we want to involve them and make sure we recognize their role in this as well. Well, any final thoughts or just closing maybe a call to action or anything that you want to wrap up with? Yeah, so thank you very much. What I would like to end on is to call upon all nations to join the coalition for us to start discussions on the treaty and so that in the rest of the two years, we can have this legally binding treaty to end plastic pollution, because the world has enough crisis to add plastic crisis and of course we call upon all nations to have their domestic framework to end plastic pollution so that we walk the talk going to a national and being ready nationally. We have to think globally, but act nationally to make sure by 2040 the world is free of plastic pollution. I thank you very much and I call upon the low ambitious nations to be high ambitious nation to join the high ambitious coalition. I thank you. And I would like to say that we talk about three planetary crises. We have the climate crisis to imagine missions. We have a biodiversity crisis. We lose species and we lose nature's ability to give us the nature services and we have a pollution crisis. Plastics is part of all of these crises. It's pollution. It affects natural and human health and it's also a climate problem because when you incinerate plastic you emit emissions. So addressing plastics is in a sense one of the easier ones. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's easier because it's manmade. You know what it means. You know how to try to take it out of this waste thing that is happening now. And if you address this, I think you're going to gauge a lot of people because it's easier to understand that finding whales full of plastic is clearly a problem even if this CO2 thing to some people still is a little hard to grasp. So it's also a good entry point to mobilize people to understand that if we want to have good lives in the future on this planet, we need to reset our partnership with nature and that it can be done. That the modern, future-oriented economy needs to be less pollutant, less emissions, more nature positive. Well, thank you so much, minister. Both ministers. This was a great conversation and I just want to say thank you to everyone also who's watching. Hope you all have a great day.