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Podcast: In Focus by The Hindu
Episode: Why did the plastic pollution talks in South Korea fail to yield a treaty?
Description: The fifth meeting of the UN’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) has ended without delivering a legally binding treaty to address global plastic pollution. The talks, which began in March 2022, were supposed to have produced a treaty by the end of 2024 but they haven’t.The discussions saw a sharp divide between two camps – a large coalition of about 100 countries that wanted caps on plastic production, and a smaller set of oil-producing nations that wanted to focus only on plastic waste management. With the two camps unable to reach a compromise, the conference concluded on December 1 with an agr...