Plastic Pollution: Geneva Meeting Failure

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In August, the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) talks held in Geneva with the goal of drafting a global legally binding document on plastic pollution, failed to yield any results after ten days of discussion.

The lack of consensus, and thus of issuing any plastic production and pollution global regulation, poses serious problems as the environmental plastic emergency becomes more and more pressing. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) warns that, unless an international accord is reached soon, plastic waste is projected to triple by 2060. Tuvalu, convention delegate speaking for fourteen small island states in the Pacific, declared that “millions of tonnes of plastic waste will continue to be dumped in our oceans, affecting our ecosystem, food security, livelihood and culture.” Indeed, of the 500 million tons of plastic consumed in 2024, 399 million went to waste.

Plastic pollution invades the food chain and provokes biodiversity loss in the oceans. This ripples into human health. Researchers have studied the impacts of plastic pollution in the ocean: amongst others, the transmission of toxic chemicals into the oceans. These are integrated into the food chain and, at some point, in our plates, affecting our health after having affected that of countless marine fauna and flora species. Dioxins or PCBs are some of the chemicals released by plastic waste, with causal links to cancer having been found among humans.

Global efforts are underway to mitigate the plastic pollution crisis, like the work of The Ocean Cleanup, an international non-profit cleaning up plastic waste from our rivers and oceans. However, the long term solution remains reducing plastic production. As UNEP Executive Director Inger Anderson stated, “We will not recycle our way out of the plastic pollution crisis.” Anderson’s concerns have been echoed by countless environmental activists and advocacy groups, including GreenPeace, which has called for the reduction of plastic production by at least 75 per cent by 2040.

If hopes were high at the beginning of the talks in Geneva, the failure to reach consensus over the drafting of a global legally binding document has disillusioned many. The outcome was characterised by The Guardian as a blow to multilateralism, demonstrating that looking for consensus among nations to act collectively is not efficient. The Geneva summit was the fifth occasion on which countries gathered to discuss the plastic pollution document. The original deadline to draft a document was set to December 2024, making August 2025 an already late solution. The consensus has become a “veto tool,” according to Down to Earth journalist Siddharth Ghanshyam Singh. The necessity for all members to agree means only a few countries voting against a decision can block the negotiations.

In light of this, petroleum-producing countries, those who call themselves the ‘like-minded countries’ led by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries, the US, Russia and India, blocked all the processes by voting against all beginning drafts. Colombian delegate Sebastiàn Rodriguez stated that the negotiations were “consistently blocked by a small number of states who simply don’t want an agreement,” while French Environment Minister Agnès Pagner-Runacher blamed the delay on countries “guided by short-term financial interests.” Hence, the reaching consensus appears to be blocking any advancement to solve the plastic pollution crisis: because of countries who fear caps on plastic production affecting their economies. At this point, abandoning a global approach and considering meeting without the participation of “petrostates,” as coined by Micronesia delegate Dennis Clare, could prove more efficient in reaching a decision.

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