Global talks on plastic pollution end without a treaty

The 10-day conference in Geneva, from August 5 to August 15, which brought together more than 3,700 people from 184 countries to develop a strategy to end plastic pollution, failed to reach a treaty. Policy experts equated the process with climate negotiations, where decision-making has been slow for 30 years due to a lack of clear consensus.

Typically, in the U.N. rules of procedure, a consensus is preferred over voting, but “as a last resort,” voting can be invoked when “all efforts have been exhausted and no consensus reached,” as in the case of the Minamata Convention on mercury pollution.

In the charged negotiations in Geneva, the global seat of diplomacy, the conflict pitted a large group of countries advocating for strict regulations against plastic production and consumption against a minority of those with significant petroleum and petrochemical industries, who sought to continue producing virgin plastics to safeguard their economic interests.

The prominent issues of contention were plastic production, the use of toxic chemicals in plastics, the phase-out of unnecessary and single-use plastics, the health impact of plastic pollution, and financial and decision-making mechanisms. This was the second time the countries failed to reach a consensus; the last such meeting was held in Busan, South Korea, in November 2024, when it concluded with a draft Chair’s text that was to be deliberated upon in Geneva.

“A small number of countries did not want a treaty, so they derailed the process. It wasn’t surprising, as we had seen them negotiating in bad faith for the last five sessions. However, instead of finding a pathway for a majority of countries to agree on a treaty, the Chair bent over backwards to accommodate the obstructionist tactics of these handful of countries,” said Neil Tangri, Science and Policy Director at Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA).

A global plastic crisis

Currently, the world produces more than 430 million tonnes of plastic annually. Of this, 280 million tonnes become waste. Only 9% of this waste is recycled. When it became evident that plastics, discovered to be a light and durable material, had gone into over production and throwaway culture of consumption, so much so that it resulted in trans- boundary marine pollution, the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) took charge and passed a resolution in 2022 to develop an “international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment.”

The UNEA established an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) and tasked with developing this instrument, which would address the full “lifecycle” of plastic production (upstream), product design and use (midstream), and disposal (downstream). Around $40 million has been spent on the five INC meetings that were supposed to finalise a treaty by 2024, but were unable to do so. Termed INC 5.2, the Geneva meeting was the sixth and the longest INC yet.

Over time, to negotiate in the INC, many countries aligned themselves in regional and interest-based groups, such as the High Ambition Coalition, the Pacific and Small Island Developing States, the Alliance of Small Island States, and the African group of countries. While these countries have called for a stronger treaty that addresses caps on production, others with economic interests, such as India, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and other oil-producing countries, have formed themselves into a “Like-Minded Group (LMG).”

Process over substance

Conflict set the tone for INC 5.2 from the first plenary (an assembly of all the country delegates and observers to the meeting from non-profits and scientific bodies and other stakeholders) itself when the Saudi Arabian delegate said that the text on production of plastics was not acceptable to them but it had still been included in the Chair’s text from Busan.

In the mid-way stocktake meeting, India reiterated its earlier stand on consensus in decision-making at the INC. It also stressed that the INC should stick only to plastic pollution in the downstream rather than the full lifecycle, and there should be no global list of plastics to be phased out, even as it has banned single-use plastics within the country. The country also said all measures for addressing plastic waste management should be voluntary, which goes against the UNEA mandate of a “legally-binding treaty.”

“We are demanding a consensus to protect India’s interests. If there is voting on contentious articles here at the INC, 27 countries of the European Union (E.U.) and the African states combined are enough to win the vote,” said a member of the Indian delegation on the condition of anonymity as they were not the official spokesperson.

However, things took a turn for the worse on the second last day of the meeting when the chair released the first revised draft, sending everybody into a flurry. Articles on production, health, toxic chemicals, and the phase out of problematic plastics were removed from the text, and most provisions were made voluntary. There was no mention of the rights of affected indigenous communities or of binding just transition measures for waste pickers and other people involved in the plastic value chain.

While India found the text a “good starting point”, most countries strongly rejected the text as “imbalanced and unacceptable.”

“Our red lines (non-negotiable points) and those of the majority of the countries in this room were not only stomped on, they have been spat on and burnt. Our goal here is to end plastic pollution, not simply get to a political agreement,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, Special Representative for Climate Change, Ministry of Environment, Panama.

What followed was a night of drama, marked by informal negotiations with regional groups and heads of delegations. The final plenary, scheduled for the afternoon of August 14, could only take place at 11:30 p.m. and was reconvened the next day. Despite all the hard work, countries were not ready to compromise, and the new text released at 1 a.m. sealed the fate of the Geneva negotiations.

“The INC Secretariat and Chair are using a tried-and-true blueprint of introducing an unacceptable text, then returning with a mediocre take-it-or-leave-it treaty that shows marginal improvement, but still falls short of what is needed to address the plastics crisis,” said David Azoulay, Managing Attorney of the Centre for International Environmental Law.

“The new text dropped in the middle of the night, and that is part of the strategy. But a closer analysis reveals that on the key elements — control on problematic products and chemicals, control of production, protection of health — it is designed to be almost entirely voluntary and almost impossible to strengthen over time,” Azoulay added.

Delegations from the Pacific and Small Island and Developing States (SIDS), some of whom travelled more than two days to reach Geneva, were in a tizzy. “We don’t have 75 years to wait for a treaty. And we are clear that unless the tap is shut, there is no point in mopping the floor. It is not right for small islands, which are on the frontline of this crisis, to bear the brunt of a situation they did not create. Our communities are facing the triple planetary crisis of plastic pollution, biodiversity loss, and global warming. Our economy thrives on fisheries and tourism, which are affected by plastic pollution now, putting them into an evolutionary crisis,” said Sivendra Michael, Permanent Secretary for Environment and Climate Change, Fiji.

A ray of hope

Chair Luis Vayas Valdivieso declared in the final plenary that a future course of action will be decided later, leaving room open for assumptions. The next meeting will consider the 2024 text only, as both the iterations that came out in Geneva were rejected by the member states.

Scientists and policy experts observing the proceedings in Geneva still feel there is hope. “The text proposals put forward by ambitious countries during the INC gained a lot of political support,” said Tangri.

One of the proposals to gain traction from 130 countries was the one put forward by Switzerland and Mexico. It asked for a list of plastic products, including those containing chemicals of concern, to be phased out. Another by Chile and the U.K. on mandatory ‘reuse’ targets gained support from 111 countries, while the one on the need for a separate article on health gained support from 128 countries. A proposal by Peru and Colombia on allowing voting if all efforts at consensus are exhausted, gained support from 120 countries.

“If the High Ambition Coalition and supporting countries meet for a week and work through all those text proposals, they could come up with a treaty text that would be acceptable to at least 120 countries. This text can then be taken to UNEA or even the U.N. General Assembly, or they can even stay outside the U.N. process to sign a treaty,” said Tangri.

However, what is really needed at this stage is a change in process. “Doing the same thing again and again, with a group of bad actors in the room, is a recipe for repeated failure,” Tangri added.

Scientists believe that parallel efforts are needed to raise awareness about plastics. “When people become concerned about what is in their children’s toys, they will ask their government for a stronger treaty. When they know that 70% of the non-communicable diseases are spread from chemical exposure (plastics have 16,000 chemicals of which 4,200 are proven toxic), they will want their government to act. And then it will be a ‘people’s treaty,’ said Yuyun Ismawati, co-chair of the International Pollutants Elimination Network, a network of non-profits working in 130 countries.

Read more: Invisible plastics are changing our oceans [Commentary]

Banner image: An art installation titled The Thinkers’ Burden, outside the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva, during negotiations from August 5–15, where delegates from over 120 countries gathered to negotiate a legally binding plastic treaty. Image by Ravleen Kaur.