5 takeaways from the global negotiations on a treaty to end plastic pollution

abcnews.go.com:

The world’s nations finished a round of negotiations early Tuesday on a treaty to end plastic pollution and made more progress than they have in three prior meetings

OTTAWA, Ontario — The world’s nations finished a round of negotiations early Tuesday on a treaty to end plastic pollution and made more progress than they have in three prior meetings.

Coming into Ottawa, many feared the effort would stall to craft the first legally binding treaty on plastics pollution, including in the oceans. The last meeting was marred by disagreements and there was much left to do.

But instead, there has been a “monumental change in the tone and in the energy," said Julie Dabrusin, a Canadian parliamentary secretary.

It was the fourth Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution session. For the first time, the nations began negotiating over the text of what is supposed to become a global treaty. They agreed to keep working between now and the next and final committee meeting this fall in South Korea.

“We are working toward a world where we won’t have plastic litter everywhere in our ecosystems," Jyoti Mathur-Filipp, the executive secretary of the committee, said in an interview. “The energy is there, the will is there and I know we will get an instrument by the end of the year."

Here are some of the biggest takeaways from the meeting:

NATIONS ARE NEGOTIATING

The talk shifted in Ottawa from sharing ideas to negotiating treaty language. Finally, said Santos Virgílio, Angola’s chief negotiator. Time was wasted in previous meetings, Virgílio said, but this time many arguments had been exhausted and it was time to find solutions.

“It’s big, because we have been going round and round during these sessions without showing