Governments resumed meetings of contact groups 1 – 4, which continued to remain open to observers. However, there were more informal sessions (closed to observers) than in previous days on certain articles. Governments are socializing proposals in an effort to reach common ground. First reading of most articles concluded and some contact groups started textual negotiations. Additional detailed notes from the contact group sessions are available for the PLG.

Key insights:

• In Contact Group 1, countries worked on Article 5, “Plastic Product Design”, where countries added a wide range of text suggestions. These additions will be taken up in informal negotiations tomorrow morning.
• In Contact Group 2, despite efforts by co-chairs to remind governments that the intention is to streamline the text, articles reviewed today expanded significantly. Several paragraphs have been added to Article 9 on Existing Plastic Pollution. Article 10 on Just Transition now includes references to human rights, and unilateral trade measures. Articles 8, 9, and 10 will have informal and informal-informal sessions tomorrow but co-chairs asked to submit results of discussions by 3 pm today to prepare for submission as update to Saturday’s stocktaking plenary.
• Contact Group 3 began with a debate on how to proceed in negotiating Article 12, Capacity Building, that resulted in textual negotiations on the first paragraph of the article. Later in the day, the group held an informal negotiation on Article 11, Finance. Finally, the informal co-facilitators reported back to and the Contact Group debated how to proceed with textual negotiations on the article, deciding to let the cofacilitators create a new version of the INC-5 Chair’s text that reflects the inputs of the informal discussions.

Contact Group 4 started negotiations on Article 19 (Health) with some governments expressing this article needs to be retained, whereas others envision elements of this article can be integrated into other parts of the text. Those that asked for the article to be retained pointed to importance of this provision in the assessing the impact of microplastics on human health.