Negotiations to achieve the first treaty against plastic pollution fail again

The countries are unable to close a text at the Geneva meeting after two and a half years of talks and are calling for a future new round

After another endless night of negotiations, talks to agree at the UN on the text of the first global pact against plastic pollution have once again failed. The meeting held in Geneva (Switzerland), which began on August 5 and in which around 180 countries under the UN umbrella participated, closed on Friday morning without being able to agree on this treaty that seeks to put an end to one of the great environmental problems that hit the planet. In the last two and a half years, the negotiators of these almost two hundred countries have already met six times. The Geneva Treaty was already an extension, because the objective set within the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2022 was that by the end of last year this international treaty could have been ready. But, again, the confrontation between the countries has made such a pact impossible. The meeting has been suspended with the intention that talks can be resumed in the coming months, as a majority of the countries have stated. What is not clear is how or when. “Now we need to sleep and then reflect,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP after almost 24 hours of uninterrupted negotiations. Although there are several points of friction that have blocked the agreement for years, the possibility of including limitations on plastic production – something that the fossil fuel sector and oil countries reject – is the stumbling block that has been most clearly manifested in these two and a half years of negotiations. On one side is a large group of countries, some 80 nations, including the European Union, which consider it essential to put a stop to plastic production. On the other side is another smaller group of states whose economies are closely linked to oil – led by Saudi Arabia – which maintains an insurmountable red line: the treaty should focus only on pollution and not on putting limits on production, as the fossil sector advocates.

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