As the world converges in Geneva from August 5 to 14 for the resumed fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5.2), hopes are pinned on reaching a breakthrough in what could be a defining moment for environmental diplomacy — the world’s first legally binding plastics treaty. If negotiators can land an agreement, it will be forwarded to a Diplomatic Conference of the Plenipotentiaries (DipCon) for formal signing and later ratification — the critical steps that turn negotiated text into enforceable global law.
What’s at stake?
The 2022 UN Environment Assembly mandate (UNEA 5/14) directed governments to negotiate ‘an international legally binding instrument’ to end plastic pollution on an ambitious timeline aimed at completion by end-2024. That deadline has slipped, and the Geneva session represents the last scheduled opportunity to pull a high-ambition deal together before momentum fades.
Talks stalled at the Busan meeting in late 2024, leaving behind a sprawling draft — the Revised Chair’s Text — that runs 22 pages and carries more than 370 bracketed disagreements spanning production controls, chemicals of concern, financial support and the basic question of whether obligations should be binding globally or left to national discretion. Delay tactics, closed-door negotiating formats and repeated deferrals on the Rules of Procedure have compounded mistrust in the process, prompting calls for greater transparency as Geneva opens.
Without bold, binding measures, scientists warn that runaway production and poorly regulated downstream dumping will intensify ecosystem damage, climate risks and human exposure to toxics. Many countries pushing for ambition argue that deferring fixes to future meetings — as has happened in other multilateral environmental agreements — risks losing decades.
“Plastics harm human health with disproportionate impacts on vulnerable populations, including workers and children. We are only beginning to understand the presence of micro and nanoplastics in our bodies — found in blood, breast milk, brain, lungs, heart, liver, and more,” said Margaret Spring, Chief Science and Conservation Officer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Current positions
Negotiations are polarised. A bloc of more than 100 countries restated their ‘red lines’ at the close of Busan and reiterated them in the Nice Declaration on the margins of the UN Oceans Conference in July — calling for ambition on production controls and decision-making rules that avoid paralysis.
Opposing them are major plastics-producing and fossil-fuel-aligned economies — including influential voices within the BRICS+ grouping — that have resisted global caps and argued to narrow the treaty to downstream waste management, a move critics say would gut its effectiveness.
The Busan outcome nonetheless gave negotiators a common launch pad, which is the Revised Chair’s Text, now the working basis for all Geneva talks.
“In Geneva, it’s time for countries to show flexibility and find common ground. We must not only agree on a text but make it effective and implementable — a legally binding instrument that will end plastic pollution. It must be a future proof living document, one that will work ten or twenty years from now,” said Ambassador Luis Vayas Valdivieso of Ecuador, who chairs the INC process, during the recent webinar hosted by London-based Chatham House.
Sivendra Michael, Fiji’s Permanent Secretary for Environment, says, “Without upstream measures, we’ll be stuck cleaning up garbage in perpetuity. For small island states like ours, the burden is overwhelming — one landfill serves just a few councils, while hundreds of islands are left to fend for themselves.” The projections show without upstream interventions — especially reductions in plastic production — global plastic output could nearly triple by 2060.
“The treaty must recognise and operationalise the special needs of Small Island Developing States and LDCs. It must not be symbolic. We need simplified access to finance and technology, not watered-down words,” Michael added.
What to expect
INC-5.2 is the longest session yet. A 10 full negotiating days, organised into four contact groups clustered around contentious articles (production, chemicals, finance, and governance), with a legal drafting group charged with cleaning the text for final plenary adoption on August 14.
Delegates will also hammer out the roadmap to the DipCon and sketch the work programme leading up to the first COP — guidance that countries will need to translate treaty obligations into national law once the agreement enters into force.
More than 70 ministers are expected to arrive mid-session to close political gaps, but unresolved Rules of Procedure — including how to settle disputes if consensus collapses — could yet derail the finish.
Imbalance in negotiations, threats
Industry participation has surged across recent sessions; in Busan alone, more than 220 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists registered — outnumbering scientists by three to one and Indigenous representatives by almost nine to one.
In fact, on July 8, Richard Thompson, a marine biologist from the University of Plymouth who has been working on plastic pollution for 30 years and co-coordinator of the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, expressed deep concern during the UK Parliament’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee hearing about scientists facing threats in the context of the UN plastics treaty negotiations.
He stated: “Scientists I work with have been threatened on UN premises as part of these negotiations… threats to scientists are not a new issue. It has happened through many of these negotiations.”
When asked to elaborate, he confirmed these were verbal threats from industry representatives, and that those responsible were ejected from the UN premises. Thompson said there was an imbalance in the negotiation process, where industry actors are well-funded and well-represented, while scientists are often self-funded observers with limited voice and protection.
He added that almost what he would consider a fundamental right to science and to access science was being denied. Later, he shared that even in peer-reviewed publications, he had personally received legal threats from companies for naming specific products or findings. He acknowledged that these threats could discourage younger scientists from participating or speaking out. This testimony was a powerful call for the establishment of an independent, protected scientific evidence mechanism, as mandated by UNEA 5/14, to ensure fair and safe participation for scientists in treaty processes.
Amy Youngman, legal and policy specialist at Environmental Investigation Agency, said: "When fossil fuel and chemical lobbyists outnumber not just scientists, but most national delegations, you have to ask: who is this treaty really being written for? In Busan, over 220 lobbyists had seats in the room, which is more than any other delegation and more than most low-income country delegations combined. That’s not participation, it’s capture. These are the very actors driving the plastics crisis, and they’re not just shaping access, they’re shaping the tone of negotiations and even influencing national positions, all while slowing ambition. Unless there’s a course correction in Geneva, the treaty risks being forged under the shadow of the very industries it’s meant to hold to account."