What is the UN Global Plastics Treaty?
The resumed fifth session of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-5.2) saw a landmark resolution be adopted to end plastic pollution. The Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee (INC) was convened and tasked with developing an internationally legally binding instrument to address the full life cycle of plastic, from production to disposal, including in the marine environment [1].
Initially, the treaty was to be finalised by the end of 2024 [2]. However, deadlock has stalled progress, with countries divided on whether the treaty should include plastic production in its scope or focus on plastic waste management. The talks collapsed in August 2025 after agreement could not be reached, and in October 2025 the then-Chair, Ecuadorian Ambassador Luis Vayas Valdivieso abruptly resigned [3]. The new Chair, Chilean ambassador to the UN Julio Cordano, took on the position in February 2026 [4]. Since then, the interim process has been distinctly behind closed doors in format, consisting of informal discussions with an unusually long period of 19 months (August 2025 to March 2027) between official negotiations [5]. The second informal Heads of Delegation meeting concluded in Bangkok, Thailand, on 30 September 2026, with large coalitions headed by developing countries to secure an ambitious treaty [6].
Where are we now?
In August 2026, a new informal reference document was shared by the Chair following the informal discussions that took place earlier that month in Nairobi between the Heads of Delegations [7]. This document is specifically not a new draft text of the UN Plastics Treaty, but is instead an “Aid to Negotiations,” according to the Chair. Experts have said that the latest plastic treaty document signals even less ambition than the last, in a process that is already significantly delayed [8].
Challenges facing the Treaty
The disappointing progress is reflected by the fact that the document is largely unchanged from the draft released in August 2025. Indeed, it now has more bracketed text, which signals disagreement among the parties and leaves the content up for discussion. Concerns have been raised particularly about the brackets around mentions of human health, meaning that protecting health from the impact of plastics might be lost from the text altogether, despite substantive evidence as to their toxic impacts [8]. Analysis from the Center for International Environmental Law also reiterated the need for it to address plastics production, which Member States as well as scientific evidence call for the treaty to address [9].
The progress and the outcomes of the treaty appear worryingly fallible to plastics industry and petrostates lobbying. Any degree of faltering ambition, therefore, must continue to be taken seriously. For example, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep), Inger Andersen, faced criticism for her statement in 2024 that was perceived to undermine the need for a cap on plastic production: which is the point at which the detrimental impacts of plastics begin, not just from their usage once produced [10].
The role of the fossil fuel industry
Not only is the treaty a portrait of the state of multilateralism – urgent calls to reverse the trend of behind-closed-doors approach to negotiations, which open up opportunities for powerful oil- and plastic-producing interests to derail talks, say it all – but it also reinforces that it is high time to connect the dots between fossil fuel and plastics [5]. In fact, it is just one dot: the raw materials to produce them are the same. Plastics are also not only made from fossil fuels, but made with them [11], a life cycle accounting for around 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 [12]. Yet, curbing plastics and fossil fuel production has been strategically decoupled by fossil fuel industry lobbying, diverting plastics regulations away from climate change policy and limiting the Global Plastics Treaty to downstream waste management rather than caps on upstream production [13]. This is a critical gap and also a delay tactic in the treaty negotiations, which has yet to explicitly acknowledge that the plastic life cycle is rooted in fossil fuel extraction [13].
However, as the energy transition reduces demand for fossil fuels, this artificial silo between plastics and fossil fuel production is disintegrating. Plastic production is increasingly viewed as a lifeline market for oil and gas companies [14]; there is an existing complex of global fossil fuel subsidies that plastic production benefits from; and lobbyists have flooded plastics negotiations to stall progress. These moves are unmissable: the fossil fuel industry is the elephant in all of the negotiating rooms [15]. This is a full circle that exposes the fundamental contradictions that should have been in plain sight: the plastic crisis and the climate crisis are inextricable from one another, and all the while, the companies profiting from plastic pollution are being allowed to influence the treaty designed to end it [11, 16].
