Earth Today | Negotiations on global plastics treaty reopen in Geneva
Published:Thursday | August 7, 2025 | 12:07 AM
THE EFFORT to arrive at a global deal to manage the global plastics problem is continuing in Geneva, with the opening of part two to the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5.2) earlier this week.
The meeting, which will run until August 14, is intended to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment.
According to information from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the goal of this session is to put the final full stop on an approved text of agreement and to “forward it for consideration and adoption at a future Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries”.
The meeting follows on INC-5, which occurred in Busan, the Republic of Korea between November 25 and December 1 last year.
“That meeting was preceded by four previous sessions: INC-1, which took place in Punta del Este in November 2022, INC-2, which was held in Paris in June 2023, INC-3, which happened in Nairobi in November 2023, and INC-4, held in Ottawa in April 2024,” noted an August 5 press release from the UNEP.
Inger Andersen, executive director of the UNEP, has reminded the world of the value of arriving at an agreement.
“Plastic pollution is already in nature, in our oceans and even in our bodies. If we continue as on this trajectory, the whole world will be drowning in plastic pollution – with massive consequences for our planetary, economic and human health,” she noted in the release.
“But this does not have to be our future. Together, we can solve this challenge. Agreeing a treaty text is the first step to beating plastic pollution for everyone, everywhere,” she added.
The equivalent of some 2,000 garbage trucks full of plastic are reportedly dumped into the world’s oceans, rivers, and lakes every day, while between 19 and 23 million tonnes of plastic waste make their way to aquatic ecosystems, polluting lakes, rivers and seas every year.
In addition to marine life, compromised human health and an increasingly unstable climate also form a part of the hefty price to pay for plastics pollution – given the way in which plastics are currently made, used and disposed of.
It is against this background that the 2023 UNEP report, titled Turning Off the Tap: How the world can end plastic pollution and create a circular economy, championed a change in the business-as-usual approach to plastics production, use and disposal.
The report called instead for the deliberate transition to a circular economy, one characterised by three shifts, notably reuse, recycling, as well as reorienting and diversifying.
Reuse, it said, involves “accelerating the market for reusable products, to transform the throwaway economy to a reuse society, by creating the enabling environment to ensure the reuse market has a stronger business case than the single-use plastics market” while recycling looks at “ensuring recycling becomes a more stable and profitable venture” reducing “the amount of plastic pollution by an additional 20 per cent by 2040”.
As for reorienting and diversifying, the report said that is concerned with “shaping the market for plastic alternatives to enable sustainable substitutions, thus avoiding replacing plastic products with alternatives that displace rather than reduce impacts”.
The global deal, now the subject of discussions by the INC-5.2 in Geneva, is expected to embrace these three shifts while providing for binding as well as voluntary approaches.
Further, according to the draft report of the INC on the work of the first part of its fifth session, the text being negotiated should be “based on a comprehensive approach that addresses the full life cycle of plastic, taking into account, among other things, the principles of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, as well as national circumstances and capabilities, and including provisions described in the resolution”.
“We are here today to fulfil an international mandate. This is a unique and historic opportunity for the international community to bridge differences and find common ground,” noted Luis Vayas Valdivieso, chair of the INC, in the UNEP release.
“It is not just a test of our diplomacy; it is a test of our collective responsibility to protect the environment, safeguard human health, enable sustainable economies, and stand in solidarity with those most affected by this plastic pollution crisis,” he added.