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WAY FORWARD FOR TREATY NEGOTIATIONS LEFT UNCLEAR
Geneva, Switzerland– At the close of the plastics treaty negotiations (INC-5.2), ambitious Member States held strong under immense pressure and a broken process, and refused to end INC-5.2 with a weak treaty that would have failed to address the existential threat of plastic and repeated the fatal errors of the Paris climate negotiations.
Ana Rocha, Global Plastics Policy Director at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) states, “No treaty is better than a bad treaty. 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. Once again, negotiations collapsed, derailed by a chaotic and biased process that left even the most engaged countries struggling to be heard. A broken, non-transparent process will never deliver a just outcome. It’s time to fix it—so people and the planet can finally have a fighting chance.”
Despite the fact that the vast majority of countries agreed on the need to cut plastic production, phase out harmful chemicals, ensure a Just Transition especially for waste pickers, establish a new dedicated fund, and make decisions through a 2/3 majority voting when consensus cannot be reached, among other ambitious measures, a small group of petro-states calling themselves the “like-minded countries” sabotaged each round of talks by insisting on consensus to block ambition, and threatening to trap negotiations in procedural debate if Member States ever called for a vote.
