Delegates in Geneva worked past the Thursday deadline, through the night and into Friday morning, and still walked out with nothing. The sixth round of talks on a global plastics treaty had collapsed, the Guardian reported, with no deal and no clear way forward.
The fight was the one that has followed these negotiations since 2022: whether a treaty should cap how much plastic the world makes and bind countries to controls on the toxic chemicals used in it. About 100 countries want production limits as well as cleanup and recycling, Al Jazeera said. Oil-producing states want the treaty to deal with waste and little else.
Two drafts, two rejections
The committee chair, Luis Vayas Valdivieso, put forward a draft built on the few points where countries overlapped. Al Jazeera said the text managed to enrage nearly everyone. It set no limit on plastic production and left out the chemicals question.
The ambitious camp read it as a waste-management pact in disguise. Panama’s negotiator called it “not ambition: it is surrender”. The EU said it was “not acceptable”. Kenya complained of “no global binding obligations on anything”. On the other side, Kuwait, speaking for the oil-producing group that includes Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran, said the text had “gone beyond our red lines”.
A second draft came in the early hours of Friday. Delegates from 184 countries turned down both as a starting point, the Guardian said. The new text still carried no production cap, though it called current production and consumption levels “unsustainable”. Saudi Arabia said both drafts lacked balance. Saudi and Kuwaiti negotiators argued the later one leaned toward other states’ views and strayed into production, which they regard as outside the treaty’s scope.
Anger, and an adjournment
France’s minister for ecological transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, said she was “disappointed” and “angry” that a handful of countries “guided by short-term financial interests” had blocked an ambitious treaty. Colombia’s delegate, Sebastián Rodríguez, blamed “a small number of states who simply don’t want an agreement”. Tuvalu, which spoke for 14 Pacific island states, warned that plastic waste would keep piling into their oceans.
Some campaigners went further. Christina Dixon, from the Environmental Investigation Agency, called the outcome a “blow to multilateralism” and said talks would need a new chair and a willingness to vote. Dennis Clare of Micronesia raised the idea of moving ahead without the petrostates.
The scale behind the fight is large. The world makes over 400 million tonnes of plastic each year, Al Jazeera said, and half of it goes into single-use items. Al Jazeera put the landfilled share at 46 percent, the incinerated share at 17 percent and the mismanaged share at 22 percent.
Valdivieso said the session had been adjourned, not closed. He told Agence France-Presse that countries and the secretariat would be working on a new date and venue.
Sources
- Plastic pollution talks fail as negotiators in Geneva reject draft treaties
- UN plastic pollution treaty talks extended by a day as no agreement reached
