Breaking News: No Agreement on Plastics Treaty in Geneva

Negotiations at the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) 5.2 in Geneva have ended without an agreement on plastic pollution. Countries remain deadlocked over issues including restrictions on production, plastic reduction, and recycling.

Chair Luis Vayas Valdivieso presented two potential drafts to be used as the basis of negotiations during the session, with neither one receiving approval from delegates.

A high-ambition coalition of countries wants to reduce global plastic production to address the problem of plastic pollution in the environment. However, countries like Saudi Arabia, for whom production of petroleum-based plastic is a critical part of their economy, consider reductions out of scope for the negotiations and are pushing instead for better waste management and recycling programs to reduce pollution.

The new drafts tabled by the chair did not address a potential production cap for plastic, though they did recognize that current levels of production exceed the capacity of waste management programs and referred to them as “unsustainable.”

The reaction to the failure has been one of frustration.

“The inability to reach an agreement in Geneva must be a wake up call for the world: ending plastic pollution means confronting fossil fuel interests head on,” said Greenpeace Head of Delegation to the Global Plastics Treaty negotiations and Global Plastics Campaign Lead for Greenpeace USA Graham Forbes in a press release. “The vast majority of governments want a strong agreement, yet a handful of bad actors were allowed to use process to drive such ambition into the ground. We cannot continue to do the same thing and expect a different result. The time for hesitation is over.”