Despite Friday’s outcome, the plastics treaty does not yet appear to be dead. Virtually all countries expressed an interest in continued negotiations—the European Union delegate Jessika Roswall said she would not accept “a stillborn treaty”—and many used their mic time during the closing plenary to remind others of what’s at stake.
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Caption: Tuvalu’s delegate, Pepetua Election Latasi, during a plastics treaty plenary meeting in Geneva.
Credit: Joseph Winters/Grist
“We cannot ignore the gravity of the situation,” a negotiator from Madagascar said. “Every day, our oceans and ecosystems and communities are suffering from the consequences of our inability to make decisive and unified actions.” Tuvalu’s delegate, Pepetua Election Latasi, said failing to enact a treaty means that “millions of tons of plastic waste will continue to be dumped in our oceans, affecting our ecosystem, food security, livelihoods, and culture.”
Still, without a change in the negotiations’ format—particularly around decisionmaking—it’s unclear whether further discussions will be fruitful. The norm around “consensus-based decisionmaking means the threat of a vote can’t be used to nudge obstinate countries away from their red lines; unless decisionmaking by a majority vote is introduced, then this dynamic is unlikely to change. “This meeting proved that consensus is dead,” said Bjorn Beeler, executive director of the International Pollutants Elimination Network, a coalition of health and environmental organizations. “The problem is not going away.”
Other nonprofits and advocacy groups staged several silent protests during the Geneva talks raising this same point, displaying signs reading, “Consensus kills ambition.”
Senimili Nakora, one of Fiji’s delegates, said during the closing plenary that “consensus is worth seeking if it moves us forward, not if it stalls the process.” Switzerland’s negotiator, Felix Wertli, said that “this process needs a timeout,” and that “another similar meeting may not bring the breakthrough and ambition that is needed.”
Other countries raised broader concerns about “the process” by which negotiations had proceeded. Meetings had been “nontransparent,” “opaque,” and “ambiguous,” they said during the plenary, likely referring to unclear instructions they had received from the secretariat, the bureaucratic body that organizes the negotiations.
Inger Andersen, the UN Environment Programme’s executive director, told reporters on Friday that it at least had been helpful to hear countries more clearly articulate their red lines. “Everyone has to understand that this work will not stop, because plastic pollution will not stop.”
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Caption: Observers sit outside the assembly hall at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, waiting into the early hours of the morning for plenary to start.
Credit: Joseph Winters/Grist
The plastics industry, which has opposed controlling plastic production and phasing out groups of hazardous chemicals, said it would continue to back a treaty that “keeps plastics in the economy and out of the environment.” Marco Mensink, council secretary of the International Council of Chemical Associations, said in a statement: “While not concluding a global agreement to end plastic pollution is a missed opportunity, we will continue to support efforts to reach an agreement that works for all nations and can be implemented effectively.”
Environmental groups, scientists, and frontline organizations were disappointed to leave Geneva without an ambitious treaty. They said it would have been worse, however, if countries had decided to compromise on key provisions such as human health and a “just transition” for those most likely to be affected by changes to global recycling and waste management policies, including waste pickers.
Under the circumstances, they applauded delegates for not agreeing to the final version of the chair’s text. “I’m so happy that a strong treaty was prioritized over a weak treaty,” said Jo Banner, cofounder of the US-based organization The Descendants Project, which advocates to preserve the health and culture of the descendants of enslaved Black people in of a swath of Louisiana studded by petrochemical facilities.
“It feels like our voices have been heard,” added Cheyenne Rendon, a senior policy officer for the US nonprofit Society of Native Nations, which has advocated that the treaty include specific language on Indigenous peoples’ rights and the use of Indigenous science.
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Caption: Protestors gather outside the Palais des Nations in Geneva, during talks for a global plastics treaty.
Credit: Joseph Winters/Grist
Caption: Advocacy groups call for delegates to make decisions by voting, not consensus, at plastics treaty negotiations. Credit: Joseph Winters/Grist
By contrast, observers’ voices were literally not heard during the final moments of the concluding plenary in Geneva. After more than two hours of statements from national delegations, Valdivieso turned the mic over to a parade of young attendees, Indigenous peoples, waste pickers, and others who had been present throughout the week and a half of talks. But only one speaker—from the Youth Plastic Action Network—was able to give a statement before the United States and Kuwait asked the chair to cut them off and conclude the meeting.
It is now up to the plastics treaty secretariat to set a date and time for another round of negotiations, which are not likely to happen until next year. In the meantime, all eyes will be on the UN Environment Assembly meeting in December, where Andersen is expected to deliver a report on the negotiations’ progress—or lack thereof—and which could present an opportunity for the like-minded countries to lower the ambition of the treaty’s mandate: the statement spelling out what the treaty is trying to achieve. Some environmental groups fear that Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and others will try to change the mandate so that it no longer refers to the “full life cycle” of plastics, but just plastic pollution—thus turning the treaty into a waste management agreement rather than one that addresses the full suite of plastics’ harms to health and the environment, including during the material’s production.
Banner said she doesn’t feel defeated; in fact, she’s “more passionate than ever” to keep fighting for legally binding restrictions on the amount of plastic the world makes.
“I’m planning to survive,” she added, and to do that, “we have got to stop the production of plastic.”