treaty

Pukpuk treaty commits the two neighbours to greater military cooperation, although the text is yet to be released.

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea (PNG) James Marape have signed a mutual defence treaty in Canberra, with the leaders saying the text of the agreement will be available soon.

Marape told reporters on Monday in the Australian capital that the treaty was drawn up “out of geography, history and the enduring reality of our shared neighbourhood”.

“It is about one bigger fence that secures two houses that has its own yard space,” Marape said, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

The Papua New Guinean leader disagreed that the pact was drawn up due to broader geopolitical issues, in an apparent reference to the military interests of countries like China and the United States in the Pacific region.

“This treaty was not conceived out of geopolitics or any other reason,” Marape said.

“We maintain friendships to all enemies, we advocate peace wherever we engage, in as far as foreign relations concern,” PNG’s leader added.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that the treaty “makes very explicit” that there will be “interoperability” between the two neighbouring countries’ “defence assets”, adding that “our greatest asset is our people”.

The ABC reported that this meant the two countries would share the same rights as current members of the Five Eyes agreement, which Australia shares with Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the US.

Marape’s office said last week that the agreement will create a path for 10,000 Papua New Guineans to serve in the Australian Defence Force, as his country also aims to build up its own defence force to 7,000 troops.

Papua New Guinea has a population of some 12 million people, of which about 40 percent live below the poverty line, in stark contrast to its richer neighbour, Australia.

The signing of the Pukpuk treaty comes weeks after Papua New Guinea celebrated 50 years of independence from Australia, which assumed control of its northern neighbour as a colonial power in 1902, after both countries were colonised by the UK.

In August 2013, Australia signed a memorandum of understanding with Papua New Guinea, which saw thousands of migrants arriving in Australia by boat detained on Manus Island in offshore detention.

The controversial detention centre closed in 2017, leaving hundreds of refugees stranded.

Australia is also seeking to sign a security agreement with Fiji, after a similar agreement covering both security and climate change with Vanuatu stalled last month.

Australia also recently signed a landmark treaty with Tuvalu, the world’s first agreement offering visas to help people facing displacement due to the climate crisis to resettle.

Climate change remains a key security concern for many countries in the region, with Australia bidding to host the 2026 UN COP climate change meeting, alongside its Pacific neighbours.

The bid has yet to materialise as Turkiye is also formally campaigning to host the same meeting.

As global plastic treaty talks end in failure, with no agreement, all is not lost in the global momentum to cut plastic pollution. United States lawmakers recently introduced the Microplastics Safety Act, for example, mandating the Department of Health and Human Services to study microplastics exposure and health impacts. The bill reflects growing concern in Congress about the plastics health crisis and the broad bipartisan support to address it.

However, given that plastic production, use, and hence exposure, continue to increase every year, we should not wait idly for the US report’s findings or more failed global plastic treaty talks. There is enough evidence to take action now. Below, we highlight three areas that can help reduce everyone’s exposure to microplastics: culture, business and policy.

In culture, there are many default behaviours that we can rethink and re-norm. What if we saw more people bringing their own metal or wooden cutlery to the next barbecue, more shoppers bringing home whole fruit instead of plastic-wrapped pre-cut, and more kids and employees bringing their own refillable water bottles and coffee mugs to school and work? The more we see it normalised, the more we’ll do it. That’s how social norming works.

And having Hollywood in on this would certainly help. Two years ago, Citywide, a feature film shot in Philadelphia was Hollywood’s first zero-waste film, which is a great start. More of this is welcome, including walking the talk within movie, television and advertising scenes by swapping in refillable and reusable containers where single-use plastics would otherwise be the default or showcasing repeat outfits on characters to decentre environmentally harmful fast fashion, much of which is made from plastic.

In business, thankfully, some local grocers allow shoppers to go plastic-free. More grocers should make this shift because consumers want it. Providing staples like cereal, oats, nuts and beans in bulk bins and letting shoppers bring their own containers is a good start. Buying in bulk tends to be more affordable but unfortunately, few stores offer that option, especially stores that target shoppers with lower incomes. Even shoppers with higher incomes lack options: Whole Foods, for example, has bulk bins but in most of its locations requires customers to use the provided plastic containers or bags, which defeats the purpose.

More low-hanging fruit for grocers: try using the milk bottle approach. In some grocery stores, milk is still available in glass bottles, which is good, albeit it comes with a steep deposit. Let’s extend that model of returnable containers to other products, and at a more affordable rate. Take yoghurt, for example. Stores could have an option to buy it in returnable glass containers, since the current plastic containers aren’t recyclable. This is not a fantasy but a possibility: a newly opened grocery store in France offers all of their items plastic-free.

For restaurants, more and more businesses across the US are supporting the use of returnable containers and cities like the District of Columbia offer grants to help ditch disposables. This is exactly what we need more of. People want the option to bring their own containers or use a returnable container so that they can have take-out without risking their health and the environment with exposure to plastic. Let’s give the people what they want.

Policy is arguably the hardest of the three paths to tackle since culture and business track more closely and immediately with consumer demand. To be clear, most Americans, in a bipartisan way, are sick of single-use plastics, which is why plastic bag bans are popping up across the US, and state capitals are seeing more legislative proposals to hold producers of plastic responsible for the life cycle of plastic. What makes policy the more difficult space is the petrochemical lobby that often stands in the way, keeping policymakers mum about the human health and environmental impacts while encouraging industry subsidies: the US has spent $9bn in tax subsidies on the construction of new plastics factories over the past 12 years.

Given the health and environmental harms associated with plastics production, the obvious policy fix is to make the producers responsible for the pollution, forcing them to clean up in places locally like Beaver Creek, Pennsylvania, where the local economy suffered after an ethane cracker plant started operating there. And then to clean up globally for the harm done, since governments are left with the tab of $32bn while the public is left with the costs of health impacts from endocrine-disrupting chemicals found in plastic.

The industry, meanwhile, is fighting tooth and nail to keep selling its harmful products, misleading the public into thinking recycling is an effective solution to plastic waste. It’s not, of course, which is why California is suing ExxonMobil for deception about plastics recycling. Meanwhile, the industry continues to interfere with United Nations global plastics treaty negotiations.

It’s time we diverted those billions of dollars that taxpayers spend subsidising deadly plastics production and, instead, develop products, companies and systems that make the low-plastic life the default option for everyone. That’s the healthier future we want to live in.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

Negotiations to secure a global treaty to combat plastic pollution were in limbo as talks entered their final day after dozens of countries rejected the latest draft text.

With time running out to seal a deal among the 184 countries gathered at the United Nations in Geneva, the talks’ chair, Luis Vayas Valdivieso, produced a draft text based on the few areas of convergence, in an attempt to find common ground.

But the draft succeeded only in infuriating virtually all corners, and the text was immediately shredded as one country after another ripped it to bits.

For the self-styled ambitious countries, it was an empty document shorn of bold action like curbing production and phasing out toxic ingredients, and reduced to a waste management accord.

And for the so-called Like-Minded Group, with Gulf states leading the charge, it crossed too many of their red lines and did not do enough to narrow the scope of what they might be signing up for.

The talks towards a legally binding instrument on tackling plastic pollution opened on August 5 and were scheduled to close on Thursday, the latest attempt after five previous rounds of talks over the past two and a half years which failed to seal an agreement.

Valdivieso’s draft text does not limit plastic production or address chemicals used in plastic products, which have been contentious issues at the talks.

About 100 countries want to limit production as well as tackle cleanup and recycling. Many have said it’s essential to address toxic chemicals. Oil-producing countries only want to eliminate plastic waste.

The larger bloc of countries seeking more ambitious actions blasted what they consider a dearth of legally binding action. But oil-producing states said the text went too far for their liking.

Lowered ambition or ambition for all?

Panama said the goal was to end plastic pollution, not simply to reach an agreement.

“It is not ambition: it is surrender,” their negotiator said.

The European Union said the proposal was “not acceptable” and lacked “clear, robust and actionable measures”, while Kenya said there were “no global binding obligations on anything”.

Tuvalu, speaking for 14 Pacific island developing states, said the draft risked producing a treaty “that fails to protect our people, culture and ecosystem from the existential threat of plastic pollution”.

Britain called it a text that drives countries “towards the lowest common denominator”, and Norway said it was “not delivering on our promise … to end plastic pollution”.

Bangladesh said the draft “fundamentally fails” to reflect the “urgency of the crisis”, saying that it did not address the full life cycle of plastic items, nor their toxic chemical ingredients and their health impacts.

Oil-producing states, which call themselves the Like-Minded Group – and include Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran – want the treaty to focus primarily on waste management.

Kuwait, speaking for the group, said the text had “gone beyond our red lines”, adding that “without consensus, there is no treaty worth signing”.

“This is not about lowering ambition: it’s about making ambition possible for all,” it said.

Saudi Arabia said there were “many red lines crossed for the Arab Group” and reiterated calls for the scope of the treaty to be defined “once and for all”.

The United Arab Emirates said the draft “goes beyond the mandate” for the talks, while Qatar said that without a clear definition of scope, “we don’t understand what obligations we are entering into”.

India, while backing Kuwait, saw the draft as “a good enough starting point ” to go forward on finalising the text.

The draft could now change significantly and a new version is expected on Thursday, the last scheduled day of the negotiations.

With ministers in Geneva for the final day of negotiations, environmental NGOs following the talks urged them to grasp the moment.

The World Wide Fund for Nature said the remaining hours would be “critical in turning this around”.

“The implications of a watered-down, compromised text on people and nature around the world is immense,” and failure on Thursday “means more damage, more harm, more suffering”, it said.

Greenpeace delegation chief Graham Forbes called on ministers to “uphold the ambition they have promised” and address “the root cause: the relentless expansion of plastic production”.

The Center for International Environmental Law’s delegation chief David Azoulay said the draft was a “mockery”, and as for eventually getting to a deal, he said: “It will be very difficult to come back from this.”

More than 400 million tonnes of plastic are produced globally each year, half of which is for single-use items.

Nearly half, or 46 percent, ends up in landfills, while 17 percent is incinerated and 22 percent is mismanaged and becomes rubbish.

Russia is no longer bound by a moratorium on the deployment of short- and medium-range nuclear missiles, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said, with former President Dmitry Medvedev blaming NATO’s “anti-Russian policy” and warning that Moscow will take “further steps” in response.

Medvedev, who has engaged in a war of words on social media with United States President Donald Trump, made his latest broadside after the Foreign Ministry’s announcement on Monday.

“The Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement on the withdrawal of the moratorium on the deployment of medium- and short-range missiles is the result of NATO countries’ anti-Russian policy,” Medvedev posted in English on the X social media platform.

“This is a new reality all our opponents will have to reckon with. Expect further steps,” he said.

Medvedev, who serves as the deputy head of Russia’s powerful Security Council and has made several hawkish comments on Russia’s nuclear capabilities in recent years, did not elaborate on what “further steps” may entail.

Last week, Trump said that he had ordered two US nuclear submarines to be repositioned to “the appropriate regions” in response to Medvedev’s remarks about the risk of war between Washington and Moscow.

The Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement on the withdrawal of the moratorium on the deployment of medium- and short-range missiles is the result of NATO countries’ anti-Russian policy.
This is a new reality all our opponents will have to reckon with. Expect further steps.

— Dmitry Medvedev (@MedvedevRussiaE) August 4, 2025

In its statement, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said the developing situation in Europe and the Asia Pacific prompted its reassessment on the deployment of short- and medium-range missiles.

“Since the situation is developing towards the actual deployment of US-made land-based medium- and short-range missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, the Russian Foreign Ministry notes that the conditions for maintaining a unilateral moratorium on the deployment of similar weapons have disappeared,” the ministry said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last year that Moscow may have to respond to what they described as provocations by the US and NATO by lifting restrictions on missile deployment.

Lavrov told Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti in December that Moscow’s unilateral moratorium on the deployment of such missiles was “practically no longer viable and will have to be abandoned”.

“The United States arrogantly ignored warnings from Russia and China and, in practice, moved on to deploying weapons of this class in various regions of the world,” Lavrov told the news agency.

The US withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty in 2019, under the first Trump administration, citing Russian non-compliance, but Moscow had said that it would not deploy such weapons provided that Washington did not do so.

The INF treaty, signed in 1987 by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and US President Ronald Reagan, had eliminated an entire class of weapons: ground-launched nuclear missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500km (311 to 3,418 miles).

In its first public reaction to Trump’s comments on the repositioning of US submarines, the Kremlin on Monday played down the remarks and said it was not looking to get into a public spat with the US president.

“In this case, it is obvious that American submarines are already on combat duty. This is an ongoing process, that’s the first thing,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

“But in general, of course, we would not want to get involved in such a controversy and would not want to comment on it in any way,” he said.

“Of course, we believe that everyone should be very, very careful with nuclear rhetoric,” he added.

The episode comes at a delicate moment, with Trump threatening to impose new sanctions on Russia and buyers of its oil, including India and China, unless President Vladimir Putin agrees by Friday to a ceasefire in Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

Putin said last week that peace talks had made some positive progress but that Russia had the momentum in its war against Ukraine, signalling no shift in his position despite the looming deadline.

UK’s Starmer says plan in place in event of ceasefire in Ukraine once Russia’s Putin agrees to ‘unconditional’ truce.

The United Kingdom and Germany have signed their first bilateral treaty since World War II, pledging to deepen cooperation on defence at a time of growing threats to Europe.

The Kensington Treaty, signed by UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Thursday, includes clauses on “mutual assistance” in case of attack and on “joint export campaigns” to drum up external orders for military hardware such as fighter jets that the countries produce together.

Speaking after the signing ceremony at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, Merz was cited by the BBC as saying that defence is the thread running through the treaty, showing that Germany and the UK are “really on the way to a new chapter” following the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union in 2020.

“We see the scale of the challenges our continent faces today, and we intend to meet them head on,” Starmer said at the press conference.

It was unclear what practical impact the promise in the treaty to “assist one another, including by military means, in case of an armed attack on the other” would have, since both countries are NATO members and bound by the alliance’s mutual defence pact.

Merz’s visit to London followed a three-day state visit by French President Emmanuel Macron, during which France and the UK pledged to coordinate their nuclear deterrents, signalling tighter cooperation between Europe’s top three powers as doubts persist over US support for the continent amid Russia’s ongoing offensive in Ukraine.

While Germany does not have nuclear weapons, the treaty says the countries will “maintain a close dialogue on defence issues of mutual interest … including on nuclear issues”.

Merz and Starmer also discussed ways of boosting European support for Ukraine, following United States President Donald Trump’s announcement of a plan to bolster Kyiv’s stockpile by selling US weapons to NATO allies who would, in turn, send arms to Kyiv.

Starmer said that a plan was in place in the event of a ceasefire in Ukraine, saying the first step was to get Russian President Vladimir Putin “to the table for an unconditional ceasefire”, according to the BBC.

The so-called “coalition of the willing“, a group of countries led by France and the UK and including Germany, has been discussing the potential deployment of peacekeeping forces to Ukraine to police any future peace agreement with Russia.

The return to power of Trump, who has long been sceptical of US intervention on behalf of historic allies, has made Western European powers more focused on how to defend their own continent, particularly in light of Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, and the belief that the US may no longer be the transatlantic partner it once was.

Beyond defence, the treaty also includes an agreement to jointly combat irregular migration, part of Starmer’s push to reduce the number of asylum seekers arriving in the UK to try to counter the rise of the hard-right Reform UK party.

Starmer said the treaty showed the two countries “mean business” when it comes to disrupting the arrival of refugees and migrants, and thanked Merz for a new law giving security forces powers to investigate storage facilities used by smugglers to conceal small boats making the crossings over the English Channel.

During Macron’s visit last week, the UK and France agreed on a “one in, one out” pilot scheme that would see the UK deporting people arriving on small boats to France in exchange for asylum seekers with a strong case, who have family connections to the country.

July 17 (UPI) — Britain and Germany signed a treaty Thursday to stand together on defense and migration, among other matters.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz met Thursday and held a joint press conference in London to discuss what has been dubbed the “Kensington Treaty,” a 30-article document that promises cooperation on several aspects.

“I’m working with Germany to deliver results for British people,” Starmer posted to X Thursday. Merz also posted online, and wrote that the treaty marks “a historic day for German-British relations.”

A specific focus of the accord is on defense, as the document identifies “the Russian Federation’s brutal war of aggression on the European continent as the most significant and direct threat to their security.”

Both nations reaffirmed their commitment to NATO, but the treaty declared that the two would “pursue deep exchanges on strategic aspects of security policy,” and shall “increase cooperation on intelligence and national security capabilities in order to contribute effectively to this goal.”

Another facet of the pact deals with migration issues, in which the United Kingdom and Germany will lock in an annual “Home Affairs dialogue at senior official level” which would deal with crimes related to “migrant smuggling and border security.”

“Germany has committed to change their law so we can disrupt the supply of small boats,” Starmer also noted on social media Thursday. “We will smash the people smuggling gangs and secure our borders.”

According to the treaty, both countries “will support the provision of mutual legal assistance and the prosecution of offenders involved in the smuggling of migrants into and between the two countries.”

The document also commits that the two nations will expand on this bilateral bond by seeking “to intensify the trilateral cooperation with the French Republic, as well as their cooperation with other partners, and within multilateral formats such as the G7 and the United Nations, in order to jointly address international challenges.”

New Delhi put into ‘abeyance’ its participation in the 1960 transboundary treaty after 26 people were killed in Indian-administered Kashmir in April.

India will never restore the Indus Waters Treaty with neighbouring Pakistan, and the water flowing there will be diverted for internal use, says federal Home Minister Amit Shah.

India put into “abeyance” its participation in the 1960 treaty, which governs the usage of the Indus River system, after 26 people were killed in Indian-administered Kashmir in April, in what New Delhi described as an act of terror backed by Pakistan.

Pakistan denied involvement in the incident, which led to days of fighting between the two nuclear powers – their worst military escalation in decades, bringing them to the brink of another war.

Despite a ceasefire agreed upon by the two nations last month, Shah said his government would not restore the treaty, which guaranteed water access for 80 percent of Pakistan’s farms through three rivers originating in India.

“It will never be restored,” Shah told The Times of India newspaper in an interview on Saturday.

“We will take water that was flowing to Pakistan to Rajasthan by constructing a canal. Pakistan will be starved of water that it has been getting unjustifiably,” he added, referring to the northwestern Indian desert state.

The transboundary water agreement allows the two countries to share water flowing from the Indus basin, giving India control of three eastern Himalayan rivers – Ravi, Sutlej, and Beas – while Pakistan got control of the three western rivers – Jhelum, Chenab, and Indus.

The treaty also established the India-Pakistan Indus Commission, which is supposed to resolve any problems that arise. So far, it has survived previous armed conflicts and near-constant tensions between India and Pakistan over the past 65 years.

However, the comments from Shah, the most powerful minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet, have dimmed Islamabad’s hopes for negotiations on the treaty in the near term.

Pakistan has not yet responded to Shah’s comments. But it has said in the past that the treaty has no provision for one side to unilaterally pull back, and that any blocking of river water flowing to Pakistan will be considered “an act of war”.

“The treaty can’t be amended, nor can it be terminated by any party unless both agree,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said last month.

Islamabad is also exploring a legal challenge to India’s decision to hold the treaty in abeyance under international law.

Legal experts told Al Jazeera in April that the treaty cannot be unilaterally suspended, and that it can only be modified by mutual agreement between the parties.

“India has used the word ‘abeyance’, and there is no such provision to ‘hold it in abeyance’ in the treaty,” Ahmer Bilal Soofi, a Pakistani lawyer, told Al Jazeera. “It also violates customary international laws relating to upper and lower riparian, where the upper riparian cannot stop the water promise for the lower riparian.”

Anuttama Banerji, a political analyst based in New Delhi, told Al Jazeera in April that the treaty might continue, but not in its present form.

“Instead, it will be up for ‘revision’, ‘review’ and ‘modification’ – all three meaning different things – considering newer challenges such as groundwater depletion and climate change were not catered for in the original treaty,” Banerji said.