Plastic pollution is a scourge of land and seas, and has reached Earth’s remotest regions1. Failure to deal with it could mean exposing ecosystems and people to harmful microplastics, nanoplastics and chemicals2 for centuries. Transported globally, including by rivers and the wind2, plastics are intertwined with issues around equity and justice. Many of the communities that are most harmed by plastic pollution, for instance, are those that are least responsible for producing it3 (see ‘A giant problem’).
Plastics’ persistence over time, ability to cross borders and impacts on climate change demand international regulation. Production alone is responsible for around 5% (2.24 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) of global greenhouse-gas emissions, compared with the 1.4% (0.6 GtCO 2 ) of emissions that stem from aviation4. In recognition of this, in March 2022, the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA), the organization’s highest environmental decision-making body, established the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) to develop a global treaty to end plastic pollution, including in the ocean.
Source: R. Geyer in A Brief History of Plastics 33–47 (Springer Nature, 2017).
Yet, following six rounds of negotiations over more than three years, delegates from 184 member states remain deadlocked. After ten days of debate at a reconvened fifth session in Geneva, Switzerland, in August 2025, no agreement on a treaty could be reached.
As official observers of the INC process (P.E. and L.D.S.) and advisers among the roughly 20-person German delegation (M.B. and A.J.), we have become convinced that the INC process — as currently designed — won’t succeed. But on 7 February, a new INC chair will be elected. Several key procedural changes, if implemented and overseen by the new chair, could break the impasse and pave the way for an effective global plastics treaty.
Why the deadlock?
Creating a global plastics treaty was never going to be easy, as many experts have pointed out5.
First, negotiators have been trying to converge on rules about regulating plastics globally within a complex and fragmented pre-existing governance landscape for waste and pollution6.
What now for the global plastics treaty?
Although far from adequate to deal with the growing problem of plastic pollution, various conventions already regulate pollution from ships and the cross-border movement and trade of hazardous substances and waste, including some plastics. These include the London Convention, which entered into force in 1975; Annex V to the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, which entered into force in 1988; the 1992 Basel Convention; and the Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions, both of which entered into force in 2004.
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