Crucial negotiations to arrive at a global treaty to end plastic pollution collapse as countries remain divided in Geneva

NEW DELHI: The UN-led crucial negotiation in Geneva aimed at coming out with a legally binding global treaty to end plastic pollution ended without an agreement on Friday as countries failed to arrive at a consensus on ways to tackle the menace.

Negotiators from 185 countries, including India, discussed the issue for 10 days but could not find a common ground as major petrochemical-producing countries refused caps on virgin plastic production and control on certain chemicals.

India is learnt to have aligned with like-minded developing countries and the Gulf Cooperation Council comprising Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar who refused any global phase-out list or trade restrictions on plastic products. India has always been pitched for a "consensus-based decision-making" to reach an agreement that should focus on aspects related to "plastic pollution only" without affecting the right to sustainable development of developing countries.

"Production caps and controls on toxics and chemicals of concern are India’s redlines," Dharmesh Shah, public policy analyst, who had been tracking the negotiations, told TOI when asked about India's stand.

The United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) had in 2022 adopted a resolution to create a legally binding treaty to end plastic pollution and mandated the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to convene a meeting of the UN's International Negotiating Committee (INC) to develop such an instrument. Since 2022, the INC had met five times but could not come out with a desired result.

With the meeting (INC-5.2) in Geneva too ending without result, the Committee now agreed to resume negotiations at a future date. “While we did not land the treaty text we hoped for, we at UNEP will continue the work against plastic pollution – pollution that is in our groundwater, in our soil, in our rivers, in our oceans and yes, in our bodies,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of the UNEP.

The goal of INC-5.2 was to agree on the instrument’s text and highlight unresolved issues requiring further preparatory work ahead of a diplomatic conference. The discussions during the 10-day of negotiation revolved around key areas like plastic design, chemicals of concern, production caps, finance, and compliance.

Shah said the progress has been held back by a small group of countries whose insistence on "consensus-only decision-making" has given the least ambitious voices the power to block measures supported by the majority, from production caps to controls on toxic chemicals.

"This approach has delayed urgent action and weakened the treaty’s potential to protect health and human rights. Countries with the capacity and influence to lead, including India, have a choice: step up with ambition and help deliver a treaty that meets the scale of the crisis, or risk being remembered for defending the status quo while the world calls for change," he said.

Experts believe that a legally binding global treaty is vital to save the earth as currently more than 460 million metric tonnes of plastic are produced globally every single year of which an estimated 20 million tonnes end up polluting the environment by affecting land, freshwater and marine habitats. The situation will gradually become more serious as the global plastic waste is expected to reach 1.7 billion metric tons by 2060.