UNOC3: Indigenous voices call for plastics treaty with justice at its core

The morning light shimmered on the waters of the French Riviera, where the harbour at Port Lympia in Nice mirrored the fragile state of the oceans it welcomed. Aboard a moored vessel bearing the World Wildlife Fund’s panda emblem, a small gathering of journalists and conservationists sat hushed as Frankie Orona spoke into the salt-heavy air.

“Imagine a baby in the womb,” he said, “already exposed to plastic chemicals — pollutants we unleashed long before that child ever drew breath.”

Orona, a descendent of the Tonkawa and Apache tribes and director of the Society of Native Nations in Texas, United States, was not just delivering a speech. He was offering a reckoning — an ancestral warning echoing through the sacred circle of life, now breached by synthetic materials crafted for convenience.

On the warm June day, his call was one of the most stirring at UNOC3. Ninety-five countries had gathered in the Mediterranean city to support The Nice Wake-Up Call — a push for a robust, legally binding plastics treaty to regulate the material’s entire life cycle, from oil extraction to disposal. But beyond statistics and policy stood deeper faultlines — of ecological collapse, systemic injustice and the fight for the planet’s soul.

There is no longer a place on Earth untouched by plastic. Some 20 million tonnes of plastic litter enter the environment every year. Without urgent global action, that number could nearly double by 2040.

Yet, the plastic bottles in rivers and turtles trapped in six-pack rings are only surface symptoms. The damage begins far upstream — at fossil fuel extraction sites, petrochemical refineries and polymer factories. These are often situated next to communities like Orona’s.

“Our communities are built next to the facilities that produce this plastic,” he said. “We are breathing it, drinking it, watching our children grow up sick from it.”

Legacy of injustice

To Orona, plastic pollution is not only an ecological emergency — it’s environmental racism in a new guise. Indigenous and marginalised communities, who contribute least to global plastic waste, endure the harshest effects. From uranium mines to oil pipelines and now plastic production, they are repeatedly placed in harm’s way.

“This is genocide by pollution,” he said. “We are being poisoned without our permission. Our stories, our resistance, are invisible in the mainstream narrative.”

These communities report disproportionately high rates of respiratory illness, cancer, cardiovascular disease and birth defects — all linked to living near industrial sites. The irony stings: While producing little of the world’s plastic, they carry its heaviest burden.

But the casualties are not confined to humans. Across the world’s oceans, wildlife is choking on our detritus. It is so pervasive that it is entering the fossil record.

The Nice conference marked a turning point, but the next chapter will be written in Geneva, where UN treaty negotiations resume in August. Orona, who represents the Indigenous Peoples Major Group at the United Nations Environment Programme and the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Plastics, will be there to push not only for bans on toxic plastic chemicals and limits on production, but for the inclusion of Indigenous leadership.

“Indigenous knowledge systems are scientific,” he said. “They are based on balance, sustainability and reciprocity. These are not new ideas — they are ancient. But they are needed now more than ever.”

He warned that production caps and bans alone won’t be enough. Any global agreement must ensure a just transition — one that doesn’t deepen existing inequalities.

“A just transition cannot mean shifting the burden onto the people least responsible for this mess,” he said. “It means phasing out fossil fuel-based plastics while empowering the communities most affected to lead the way forward.”

These communities, he argued, have lived in harmony with nature for generations — protecting biodiversity, practising regenerative agriculture, and maintaining spiritual relationships with the land and water. Far from relics, these are roadmaps to the future.

But the missing piece, Orona stressed, is financial justice. Grassroots and frontline communities are routinely locked out of global financing mechanisms.

“We are the ones holding the line,” he said. “But we get the least support. That must change. Any agreement must ensure direct funding for grassroots solutions.” Without it, the treaty risks becoming another hollow promise.

Environmental toxicologist Bethany Carney Almroth echoed Orona’s concerns — from a scientific lens. “The status quo is broken,” she said. “Plastics contain thousands of chemicals — many of them toxic, carcinogenic, or endocrine-disrupting. Yet current regulations don’t begin to address this complexity.”

She called for new international standards — ones rooted in independent science, not corporate interests — and for global rules akin to those that phased out ozone-depleting substances under the Montreal Protocol. “Current standards were created for manufacturing,” she said. “Not for protecting babies, forests, or oceans.”