August 13, 2025 | Wednesday
Join Member State Delegates and members of civil society from the Global South for a press conference on Global South ambition in the plastics treaty negotiations Thursday, August 14, 2025 at 11 pm Geneva Time at Building E, Room XXVII (27). This event will be livestreamed, register here.
Universal Condemnation of the Chair’s “Unacceptable” Text
With just one more day left of the plastics treaty negotiations, countries and civil society universally rejected the Chair’s latest proposed text as an unacceptable basis for further negotiations. Ana Rocha, GAIA Global Plastics Policy Director states, “This new text is sending a clear message to the world: we do not care about your health. We do not care about the science. We do not care about human rights. We do not care about your future. We only care about consensus.”
Read the full statement.
Read statements from other members of the Break Free From Plastic Movement
Member States Fight for Ambition in Plenary
The Chair’s process for creating this latest draft reflects the lack of transparency and democratic processes that have come to define his conduct over the past INCs. While most Member States were kept busy in Contact Groups and informals, a new text was crafted, moving the needle of ambition below the bare minimum that anyone expected to see.
In plenary, Member States criticized the low ambition of the text for over three hours. Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, Head of the Panama delegation stated of the text, “Our redlines and redlines of the majority of countries represented in this room were not only stomped, they were spat on and they were burned…This is not about closing a treaty at any cost. It is about closing a wound that we’re leaving open in people’s lungs, in our rivers, in our oceans. But the text presented here makes that wound fatal and we will not accept it. This is repulsive. It is not ambition, it is surrender, and we will not sell out future generations for a text as weak as this.”
Watch Country statements in plenary
Civil Society in Action
Today as Member States entered plenary, Indigenous Peoples, youth, Global South community leaders, scientists, and other members of civil society chanted, “Use your voice, use your power!”
As Thais Carvajal of Alianza Basura Cero Ecuador states, “No treaty is better than a bad treaty. If we come out of INC-5.2 without an agreed upon text, it means that ambitious Member States stood up and refused to compromise to fossil fuel interests. If they take that brave step, civil society will have their backs.”
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About GAIA
GAIA is a worldwide alliance of more than 1,000 grassroots groups, non-governmental organizations, and individuals in over 90 countries. With our work we aim to catalyze a global shift towards environmental justice by strengthening grassroots social movements that advance solutions to waste and pollution. We envision a just, zero waste world built on respect for ecological limits and community rights, where people are free from the burden of toxic pollution, and resources are sustainably conserved, not burned or dumped.
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