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When negotiators gathered in Geneva this August for the resumed fifth session of talks on a global plastic treaty, expectations were high. This was supposed to be the final push to deliver a legally binding agreement to end plastic pollution, a promise first made in 2022 under the United Nations Environment Assembly resolution 5/14. The deadline for completing the treaty had already expired in December 2024, and the world was waiting.
Instead, what unfolded was a sobering lesson in the limits of multilateralism. After 10 days of discussions, closed-door meetings, and late-night consultations, the process ended without any progress and became an exercise in holding on to the red lines. Delegates left Geneva with no clear path forward.
The session opened on August 5 with a sense of urgency and promises of working in cooperation. The Chair’s plan was to divide the workload among four contact groups, each tasked with advancing key sections of the draft treaty. On paper, this was a practical way to speed up the process. In reality, it laid bare deep divisions.
Some groups found themselves buried under a mountain of proposals—60 in one group, 77 in another. Others started with relatively “clean” articles but got stuck as soon as the line-by-line negotiations began. What should have been straightforward discussions turned into battles over single words. The debate on how we move ahead with the discussions took most of the time in the contact groups, the rest was consumed by the level of obligations acceptable to the member states. Even long-accepted principles like the waste hierarchy (a framework that prioritises different waste management options based on their environmental impact) were called into question. It quickly became clear that the atmosphere was still shaped by the “Busan hangover,” a reference to the previous session earlier this year, which had failed to deliver progress. Geneva was supposed to move beyond that impasse. Instead, it repeated it.
One of the few bright spots came from the discussions on finance. Here, negotiators showed flexibility. Ideas such as compensation funds for oil- and plastic-producing countries, remediation funds for the small island developing states and the US-led public-private partnerships emerged. Delegations from the Arab group and the like-minded countries that had historically resisted compromise seemed willing to engage. The finance group even authorised its co-chairs to refine a text for review.
But elsewhere, the story was very different. Negotiations on global bans on single-use plastic products and plastic product design, which are equally if not more important, deadlocked. In some cases, negotiators even used cross-issue bargaining as a tactic to block finance discussions if progress was made on production cuts. Equally troubling were the gaps in the proposed texts themselves. Health impacts of plastics were not given dedicated treatment, despite over-whelming evidence of harm.
Provisions for a just transition were watered down to voluntary commitments. As one day blurred into the next, the Chair’s strategy of “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” turned into a roadblock. Only 3 articles, of the 32 being discussed, advanced to the legal drafting stage by the end of the meeting.
With time running out, the Chair introduced a new proposed text on August 13, hoping to break the stalemate. But instead of unifying delegates, it triggered outrage.
The draft left it up to countries to decide which plastics to ban in their national jurisdictions, gave no guidance on product design, enshrined consensus-only decision making for future Conferences of the Parties (COPs) and made Extended Producer Responsibility voluntary. In short, it maintained the very status quo the treaty was meant to challenge.
For some, who call themselves the like-minded countries, this proposed chairs’ text was a milestone worth working with. For many others, it was a violation of the original mandate to address the full life cycle of plastics with legally binding obligations. Within hours, more than 80 member states rejected it outright.
The Chair spent the night consulting with regional blocs and smaller groups, hoping to salvage momentum. But by the afternoon of August 14, it was evident there was no miracle text coming through.
What happened in Geneva was not just about plastic. It was about the future of global environmental governance. The negotiations highlighted a fundamental flaw: the reliance on consensus.
Consensus is meant to foster collective ownership, but in practice, it has become a veto tool. A small group of powerful states particularly those with vested interests in fossil fuels and plastic production used it to paralyse the process. This is not new; other environmental negotiations, from climate to chemicals, have faced similar challenges thus crippling the extent and scale of action to mitigate the long-term impacts of such environmental challenges. But in Geneva, the misuse of consensus reached its breaking point.
Some have argued that the collapse of talks, though disappointing, at least prevented the adoption of a weak treaty. A text that allowed countries to cherry-pick bans and measures would have been worse than no treaty at all. Plastic pollution is a transboundary problem—plastic products, waste, and microplastics move across borders daily. A patchwork of national policies cannot solve it.
The road ahead is uncertain. The Chair and UNEP can only facilitate the process and not dictate the outcome, as the process is member-state led. Unless negotiators find a way to reform decision-making, perhaps by adopting a hybrid model that tries to achieve consensus but allows voting when deadlock persists, the talks risk irrelevance.
The latest Chairs text hints at understanding the risk of continuing with consensus, as it offers a resolve in voting by three-quarter majority for substantive issues and a two-thirds majority for procedural issues. Howev-er, countries blocking the process got a taste of their own medicine when the access to finance and other means of implementation was reserved for consensus-based decision making.
History offers some hope. Other multilateral agreements have found middle ground, creating mechanisms to move forward even in the face of resistance. Whether this process can do the same will determine if a global plastic treaty remains possible.
For now, Geneva leaves behind disappointment and a warning. Multilateralism, once seen as the only way to tackle transboundary crises, is at risk of being hollowed out by entrenched interests and outdated rules. Yet, it also leaves behind a reminder: that the stakes are too high to abandon.
The plastic crisis is relentless and so must be the push for a solution.
While the world unanimously endorsed the idea of a plastics treaty, it has made little progress towards adopting such a treaty
2022
Nairobi, Kenya
February 28 - March 2
UN Environment Assembly agrees to create an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) to develop a legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution
Punta del Este, Uruguay
November 28 - December 2
INC-1 convenes, officially beginning the formal negotiations
2023
Paris, France
May 29 - June 2
INC-2 focusses on plastic lifecycle and treaty measures, but members fail to agree on the Zero Draft
Nairobi, Kenya
November 13 - 19
At INC-3, members request the Secretariat to compile a “Revised zero-draft” by December 31, 2023
2024
Ottawa, Canada
April 21-30
Some convergence emerged at INC-4, but many bracketed options and differences remain
Busan, South Korea
November 25 - December 1
INC-5.1, initially expected to deliver a final treaty, lays bare deep divisions among countries and ends without a resolution
2025
Geneva, Switzerland
August 5-15
INC-5.2 once again ends without consensus on a draft text
Source: www.genevaenvironmentnetwork.org
This article was originally published in the September 1-15, 2025 print edition of Down To Earth