Fenceline Watch Official Intervention for Global Plastic Treaty INC-2 & INC-3
Paris, France: 29 May - 2 June 2023
Honorable and esteemed Chair Gustavo Meza Cuadra, delegates, and secretariate.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak. As an environmental justice voice, I live and advocate in the heart of the largest petrochemical complex in the US, which is home to more than 300 chemical facilities and produces 44% of the nation's chemical volume. Unfortunately, this large and evergrowing plastics infrastructure is not only aging but concentrated and collocated to our vulnerable communities. Our future is in the crosshairs as toxic exposure increases mutagenic harm leading to sterility, birth defects, miscarriages, and low-birth weights. A constant stream of toxic emissions exposes us to mutagenic and multigenerational harm.
As we face a triple planetary, I stress the need for a globally binding instrument with mandatory obligations, including caps on upstream production and raw material acquisition. We must turn off the tap. The instrument must embed human rights in every aspect. The instrument must include the precautionary principle approach with an end goal of eliminating problematic polymers, chemicals, and additives throughout the plastics value chain and protective human health, biodiversity, and the environment.
Additionally, the instrument must include an objective of water security to protect diminishing freshwater sources, as they are inextricably linked to human health and the environment. Every year we have growing water shut-offs and boil water notices and droughts. Plastic producers' response is the building of mass polluting desalination facilities that further exacerbate extreme climate-inducing emissions. Therefore the instrument must limit the use of freshwater water resources or means to attain water that causes harm to human health, environment, and biodiversity so as to protect human rights.
Mutagenic, toxic exposures alter our DNA for generations, and toxic chemicals that are mutagenic must take priority. Continuing to build new plastic-producing fossil fuel infrastructure locks our world into decades of deadly emissions that undermine climate progress and the health of vulnerable populations.
From my community to yours, I thank you for the ability to speak and share issues affecting environmental justice communities like mine. I look forward to the courageous voices that will bring us an ambitious, globally binding instrument protective of human health, biodiversity, and the environment. We look forward to submitting a more substantive comment. Thank you.
Yvette Arellano
Founder | Executive Director
Fenceline Watch