UN talks on creating a global pact to stem plastic pollution collapsed in Geneva with no agreement or clear way forward after chaotic nights of negotiations failed to break a deadlock over whether to include measures aimed at curbing runaway plastic production.
With discussions running into overtime on Thursday night, a last-ditch attempt by the talks’ chair, Ecuadorian diplomat Luis Vayas Valdivieso, to table a new draft proposal for a treaty fell flat. The text, still containing numerous options in brackets, does not include a dedicated section on plastic production, which nearly 100 countries have been calling for.
An opposing group of fossil fuel-producing nations – including Gulf states, Russia and the US – vehemently reject the inclusion in the treaty of any provisions aimed at reducing plastic production, which is set to triple by 2060. The talks were unable to find a way to bridge those divergent positions.
Several countries voiced disappointment with the process managed by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in a final plenary session which came to an abrupt end on Friday morning with no next steps agreed.
Valdivieso adjourned the meeting to be resumed “at a later date” yet to be decided after the United States and Kuwait asked him to cut short the last session – with the latter saying it had become “a health issue” with delegates exhausted from the long hours.
Calls for a time-out
During the closing plenary, many countries signalled their unease with negotiations continuing under the same format that has yet to deliver a deal after two and a half years. The collapse of talks in Geneva came nine months after the failure of what was originally meant to be the final round of negotiations in December 2024.
France’s Minister for Ecological Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher said she was “disappointed and enraged” with the outcome of the talks, which she described as “so chaotic”. “Oil-producing countries and their allies have chosen to look the other way. We choose to act,” she added.
Swiss lead negotiator Felix Wertli said the process needed “a time-out” and countries should consider whether plastic pollution could best be tackled under existing UN conventions.
Comment: The global plastics treaty must move forward, with or without the US
UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen told journalists that everyone had came to Geneva to get a deal done, but it is clear “we are living in an era of political complexity”.
Claiming that “significant progress was made as red lines were clarified”, the exhausted UN official promised the work “will not stop because plastic pollution will not stop”.
But in the halls of the UN’s Palais des Nations, bleary-eyed observers expressed bitter disappointment with how the talks proceeded and called for a rethink.
New process needed?
David Azoulay, director of environmental health at the Center for International Environmental Law, called the negotiations in Geneva “an abject failure” as some countries had blocked “any attempt at advancing a viable treaty”. He called for “a restart, not a repeat performance” in future talks.
A diplomat from one developed country told Climate Home it would be fruitless to keep going when the position of petrostates remains deeply entrenched and the US appears dead set against the creation of any new global agreement.
But other countries appeared determined to power ahead with the existing process.
Speaking on behalf of the small island developing states (SIDS), Palau’s Gwen Sisior said countries needed to “carve a path forward” to complete the negotiations. She also urged Valdivieso to look for “additional avenues for political engagement” so that a “true compromise” can be found at a future session.
The talks had teetered on the brink of collapse ever since Valdivieso put forward a first proposed text on Wednesday afternoon which was variously described as “repulsive”, “entirely unacceptable” and “wholly inadequate” by country representatives.
Frantic negotiations continued throughout Thursday and into the early morning of Friday, but countries could not reach an acceptable compromise.
‘No deal better than a bad deal’
Some plastics campaigners said they preferred this outcome to the adoption of a treaty that did not set a goal to reduce the plastic production that is feeding harmful pollution on land and in the oceans.
“No treaty is better than a bad treaty,” said Ana Rocha, global plastics policy director at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. “We stand with the ambitious majority who refused to back down and accept a treaty that disrespects the countries that are truly committed to this process and betrays our communities and our planet.”
Graham Forbes, global plastics campaign lead for Greenpeace USA, said the inability to reach a deal in Geneva “must be a wake-up call for the world: ending plastic pollution means confronting fossil fuel interests head on”.
“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,” he added. “We cannot continue to do the same thing and expect a different result. The time for hesitation is over.”
