One way a plastics treaty could help the Global South: Fund waste management

If all goes according to plan, by the end of the year, some 170 countries will finalize the world’s first legally binding treaty to curtail plastic pollution. Its success will depend in no small part on money: creating a funding pipeline so that signatories, especially in the Global South, can execute the promises they agree to.

For the moment, the specifics of this financing remain bound up in diplomatic haggling. Still, countries broadly agree that billions of dollars are a necessary, if modest, starting point; modeling studies have pegged the need anywhere between $3 trillion and $17 trillion. Disagreements center on how to raise it, who should administer it, and what to spend it on.