GENEVA: Delegates discussing the world’s first legally binding treaty to tackle plastic pollution failed to reach consensus, with diplomats voicing disappointment and even rage that the 10-day talks produced no deal.
Participants had been seeking a breakthrough in the deadlocked United Nations’ talks in Geneva, but states pushing for an ambitious treaty said that the latest text released overnight failed to meet their expectations.
The chair of the negotiations, Ecuador’s Luis Vayas Valdivieso adjourned the session with a pledge to resume talks at an undetermined later date, drawing weak applause from exhausted delegates who had worked into the early hours.
French ecology minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher told the meeting’s closing session that she was “enraged because despite genuine efforts by many, and real progress in discussions, no tangible results have been obtained”.
In an apparent reference to oil-producing nations, Colombia’s delegate Haendel Rodriguez said a deal had been “blocked by a small number of states who simply did not want an agreement”.
Diplomats and climate advocates had warned earlier this month that efforts by the European Union and small island states to cap virgin plastic production — fuelled by petroleum, coal and gas — faced opposition from petrochemical-producing countries and the US under President Donald Trump.
US delegate John Thompson from the State Department declined to comment as he left the talks.
The path forward for the negotiations is uncertain.
UN officials and some countries, including Britain, said that negotiations should resume but others described a broken process.
“It is very clear that the current process will not work,” South Africa’s delegate said.
More than 1,000 delegates have gathered in Geneva for the sixth round of talks, after a meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) in South Korea late last year ended without a deal.
Negotiations had gone into overtime on Thursday as countries scrambled to bridge deep divisions over the extent of future curbs. Many, including Danish environment minister Magnus Heunicke, who negotiated on behalf of the EU, were disappointed that the final push did not yield any results.
“Of course, we cannot hide that it is tragic and deeply disappointing to see some countries trying to block an agreement,” he told reporters while vowing to keep working on the treaty necessary to tackle “one of the biggest pollution problems we have on earth”.
Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, also pledged to continue work. “We did not get where we want but people want a deal,” she said.
The most divisive issues include capping production, managing plastic products and chemicals of concern, and financing to help developing countries implement the treaty.
Anti-plastics campaigners voiced disappointment at the outcome but welcomed states’ rejection of a weak deal that failed to place limits on plastics production. “No treaty is better than a bad treaty,” said Ana Rocha, Global Plastics Policy Director from environmental group GAIA.
