Plastic Pollution Talks in Geneva End Without Treaty – Inside Climate News

GENEVA—Global talks on curbing dangerous plastics pollution ended early Friday without agreement on a comprehensive treaty. Divisions over whether to mandate enforceable limits on plastic production were too deep to bridge.

“I believe that everybody is very disappointed. However, multilateralism is not easy,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme. “To the people who are disappointed, I am in that group.”

She said discussions about moving ahead will continue, including at the UN Environment Assembly in Kenya in December, where a report  on the plastic talks is due.

Failure of the talks means that island-sized rafts of rotting plastic in the world’s oceans will keep growing for the foreseeable future, and that dangerous human health impacts from the production and processing of plastic will increase.

A 2022 resolution passed by UNEA, which includes all U.N. member states, obligated the countries to create a legally binding treaty to address these growing environmental and health threats. Four meetings over the past two years preceded this month’s Geneva talks, which were intended to deliver a full-fledged deal.

Andersen noted that no previous major U.N. treaties had been finalized on such an ambitious timeline.

“And it is important that everyone takes time to reflect on what they have heard,” she said. “Because in the closed groups … in the corridors of these halls, red lines have been mentioned for the first time in a true way which will enable deeper pathway seeking as we move ahead.”

The red lines highlight the deep division between two blocs. One group of about 80 to 100 countries, including the European Union and numerous developing countries and island nations in the Global South, is calling for global action to address all aspects of plastics pollution. 

A smaller group, including fossil-fuel producers, said they would not accept a treaty with limits on production. Gas and oil are the primary raw materials for plastics. The United States doesn’t consider itself aligned with either group, but its positions at the latest round of talks places it closest to the one blocking action. 

Broken Process?

The deadlock mirrors the situation at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiations aimed at limiting the global temperature increase caused by humans, where a similar coalition of oil- and gas-producing countries has long blocked any ambitious measures to reduce fossil fuel use, including for the production of plastics. 

To a growing number of people involved in international environmental talks, that’s a sign that the consensus-based system is not working. At Geneva, hallway conversations increasingly explored options for voting on key provisions in the treaty, including whether production and consumption should be addressed.

“A bad process doesn’t lead to good outcomes,” said South African marine biologist Merrisa Naidoo, attending the Geneva talks for GAIA Africa, part of the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.

“We only care about the achievement of consensus,” she said, speaking during a press conference on Thursday. “But consensus is not democracy. It ignores the will of the vast majority of member states, and has unfortunately started to cater to the wish list of the petrostates and fossil fuel industry.”

For the global majority favoring swift measures to curb plastics, the frustration built up throughout the Geneva talks. Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, head of Panama’s delegation at the talks, at one point said, “We are not here for diplomatic tourism. We are here to negotiate. We’re here to engage. We’re here to get a deal that includes the entire life cycle of plastic, and that means addressing production.”

About half of all plastics produced are used once and then discarded, and that, he said, “is not innovation. This is human arrogance that poisons rivers and robs our children of a safe future.”

Microplastics especially are a dangerous scourge that must be dealt with soon, he added.

“They are in our blood, in our lungs and in the first cry of a newborn child,” he said. “Our bodies are living proof of a system that profits from poisoning us. Behind every microplastic also lies a macro lie, and that lie is that recycling alone will save us.”

U.S. Opposes Production Limits

But provisions calling for less production would cross red lines for several countries, including the United States, a major plastics maker. The country opposes “restrictions on producers that would harm U.S. companies and the nearly one million American workers employed in plastics and related industries,” according to a statement from the U.S. Department of State.

“There is no one-size-fits-all approach to reducing plastic pollution; the agreement shouldn’t create prescriptive lists of products or chemicals to restrict,” a State Department spokesperson wrote in an email.

Since the start of the second Trump administration, the U.S. has backed away from international engagement and collaboration on environmental topics, but has remained fully engaged in the plastics talks. Its delegation is headed by the same career diplomats who represented the U.S. under the previous administration of President Joe Biden. 

And while the Trump administration and Congress are trying to reverse many of Biden’s environmental policies, that’s not the case at the UNEP plastic talks. Under both Biden and Trump, the U.S. has been opposed to legally binding measures requiring a reduction of plastic production and consumption.

The differences between the two administrations are nuanced, said Rachel Radvany, an environmental health campaigner who has been tracking the plastic talks since the beginning for the Center for International Environmental Law. 

Under Biden, the U.S. seemed ready to support language that would at least include some aspirational language about capping production, but that is no longer the case, she said.

“What they were supporting was not really a production cap and phase down,” she said. “It was like an aspirational target that would leave us in the same place for plastics as we are for climate, when it’s like, when everyone’s responsible, no one’s responsible.”