Despite Friday’s results, the Plastics Treaty has not yet died. Almost all countries expressed interest in continuing negotiations – EU representative Jessika Roswall said she would not accept the “stillborn treaty”, and many countries used microphone time to remind others at the closing plenary meeting.
“We cannot ignore the gravity of the situation,” said a negotiator in Madagascar. “Every day, our oceans, ecosystems and communities suffer the consequences of our inability to make decisive and unified actions.” The Pepetua representative for Tuvalu said that the failure to create a treaty means that “millions of tons of plastic waste will continue to dump into our oceans, affecting our ecosystems, food security, livelihoods and culture.”
Nevertheless, if the format of negotiations is not changed (especially around decision-making), it is unclear whether further discussions will be fruitful. The norms around “consensus-based decision-making mean that the threat of voting cannot be used to remove stubborn countries from the red line; this dynamic is unlikely to change unless a majority-vote decision is introduced. “This meeting proves that consensus is dead, said Bjorn Beeler, executive director of the International Pollutant Elimination Network, a joint organization of health and environmental organizations.
Other nonprofits and advocacy groups held several silent protests during the Geneva talks, proposing the same view, showing the sign of “consensus kills ambitions.”
“Consensus is worth looking to move us forward, not delay the process,” Senimili Nakora, one of Fiji’s representatives, said at the closing plenary meeting. “This process requires a pause,” said Felix Wertli, a negotiator in Switzerland. “Another similar meeting may not bring the breakthroughs and ambitions needed.”
Other countries raised broader concerns about the “process” of negotiations. During the plenary, they said the meeting was “opacity”, “opacity” and “ambiguous”, which might refer to the unclear instructions they received from the Secretariat, which is the bureaucracy that organizes negotiations.
Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Program, told reporters on Friday it would be helpful to hear countries express their red lines more clearly. “Everyone has to understand that this work is not going to stop because plastic pollution is not going to stop.”
The plastics industry opposes controlling plastic production and phasing out groups of dangerous chemicals, and the industry will continue to support a treaty that “keeps plastics outside the economy and the environment.” “While no global agreement to terminate plastic pollution is a missed opportunity, we will continue to support efforts to reach agreements that are valid for all countries and can be effectively implemented,” the Board Committee of the International Chemistry Association Committee said in a statement.
