Draft U.N. plastic treaty lacks teeth on production and chemicals

GENEVA (AN) — A draft international treaty to fight plastic pollution promises significant financial support for developing nations but avoids setting firm limits on plastic production and lacks strong rules for chemical transparency.

At a plenary on Wednesday that went from mid-afternoon into the evening, speaker after speaker rejected the newly watered-down draft.

"The majority of this room is saying we cannot accept it," Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez, Panama's special representative for climate change, told other delegates. "So we need a different way forward."

Earlier, Monterrey Gómez drew applause with a fiery denunciation of the text and a call to restore production and mandatory reporting.

"The red lines of the majority of countries represented in this room were not only expunged, they were spat on, and they were burned," he complained. "Our goal here is to end plastic pollution. Not simply get to a political arrangement."

With the negotiating happening behind closed doors, many delegates urged an immediate round of fresh consultations – and a quick text revision.

Luis Vayas Valdivieso, chair of U.N. Environment Program's Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee that oversees the talks and Ecuador's envoy to the U.K., took the advice and ordered "regional consultations" for Wednesday night.

The proposed legally binding agreement, spearheaded by a 2022 United Nations Environment Assembly resolution, seeks to address the entire life cycle of plastic.

Yet, an analysis of the latest negotiating text, with just one more day left in the 1o days of scheduled negotiations, reveals a cautious approach to controlling the volume of new plastic and ensuring transparency about its chemical makeup.

The solution to finding convergence among the 3,700 participants, including government delegates and representatives from over 600 organizations, seems to have been simply to delete the most controversial items.

Negotiators pared the text down to just 12 pages with 22 bracketed, or unresolved, clauses. The talks began with an "assembled" text of 35 pages with no fewer than 1,488 bracketed clauses.

"In its current form, the proposed text is not acceptable. It does not meet the minimum that is needed to respond to the challenges before us," said Danish Environment Minister Magnus Heunicke, adding "stronger commitments and more concrete provisions" were needed.

Finding 'common ground'

Valdivieso defended the draft "as a text as tool to mold, shape and improve."

"We cannot achieve consensus simply via writing down in a document writing down all the national positions," he said. "We need to build bridges, not simply dig our heels in over red lines. It means we need to find common ground."

The main point of contention remains whether nations should impose caps on producing new plastic or focus on recycling, reuse and design of plastic materials.

Oil and gas producers along with the plastics industry oppose production limits, instead preferring to focus on waste management and reuse. About 100 nations want production limits plus cleanup and recycling.

The draft contains one mention of plastic production in the preamble, reaffirming the importance of promoting sustainable production and consumption of plastics. It lacks an article on production from a previous draft and no mention of chemicals is made.

That has drawn sharp criticism from environmental groups, which argue the draft falls far short of a meaningful global response.

"The chair's new text is a gift to the petrochemical industry and a betrayal of humanity," said Graham Forbes, Greenpeace's head of delegation to the negotiations.

"By failing to address production or harmful chemicals in any way," he said, "this text glorifies the industry lie that we can recycle our way out of this crisis, ignoring the root cause: the relentless expansion of plastic production."

Aspirational language on production limits

Unlike precedent-setting agreements such as the Montreal Protocol, which mandated explicit phase-out schedules for ozone-depleting substances, the draft treaty avoids setting quantitative caps on plastic production. Instead, it relies on a less stringent, product-centric approach.

One article suggests countries "should take measures, as appropriate ... to manage, reduce, or not allow, the manufacture, export or import of plastic products" that are deemed problematic. The use of "should take measures" indicates a recommendation, not a strict legal obligation.

Such an approach grants nations flexibility but fails to directly confront the escalating global output of raw plastic material.

Zaynab Sadan, global plastics policy lead at WWF International, said this makes the draft a "collection of national and voluntary measures that will do nothing to address the worsening plastics crisis."

Financial support a strong point

In contrast, the treaty lays out an ambitious framework for financing developing nations, recognizing their disproportionate vulnerability to plastic pollution.

A critical "dependence clause" in one article explicitly links the full implementation of the treaty by developing countries to the "availability and accessibility of financial resources, capacity-building, technical assistance, [and] technology transfer."

The draft would establish a new, dedicated multilateral fund alongside the existing Global Environment Facility, signaling a significant commitment to providing new and reliable resources.

While developed countries "should provide financial resources," once provided, these funds are strictly mandated to be "grant-based and concessional," meaning they are non-debt-creating for recipients.