Policy brief: The need for data on plastics – ensuring a transparent, equitable and ambitious global agreement to end plastic pollution
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Key messages
The success of a global agreement on plastic pollution will ultimately depend on robust mechanisms for transparency, accountability, and reporting, and a binding obligation to compile relevant national data on plastics.
Data on plastics across the lifecycle will be essential to measure progress towards global objectives and enable regularly opportunities to increase ambition.
Most countries lack comprehensive data on plastic production, consumption and pollution.
Looking to other Multilateral Environmental Agreements (the Basel Convention, Minamata Convention, Paris Agreement, and Stockholm Convention) all explicitly require parties to collect relevant data, establish national inventories, monitor progress, and report findings to their respective secretariats or Conference of the Parties (COPs).
Such clear and binding provisions for comprehensive data collection, reporting, and monitoring have proven essential to the success of existing MEAs and will need to be included in the final text of the agreement.
