Towards a Global Plastics Treaty: Tracing the UN Negotiations

In 2022, the United Nations Environmental Assembly (UNEA) adopted resolution 5/14, giving mandate to UN Member States to start negotiations toward an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution. This report delves into the pre-session submissions by states and coalitions for the second (INC-2) and third (INC-3) rounds of negotiations, held in 2023. Once the contents of the documents had been reviewed, a coding analysis was conducted with the aim of understanding the current policy mix being proposed for the Plastics Treaty. The nine categories to emerge from the coding process cover proposed objectives for the treaty, types and range of measures proposed, and where along the value chain these measures fall. Our results show: (1) that the pre-session submissions give considerable attention to improving waste management and extending recycling infrastructure, while scant attention is given to upstream measures; (2) that relatively few economic measures have been proposed thus far, with pre-session submissions focusing on regulatory and soft measures instead; (3) that this uneven distribution of proposed measure types could weaken the overall effectiveness of the instrument by impeding its ability to address the issue of plastic pollution in all its complexity; (4) that, if current trends continue, we can expect a treaty focused on waste management and recycling, instead of one addressing the full life cycle of plastics; (5) and finally, that the sheer quantity of plastics being produced each year undermines any efforts either to ‘end’ plastic pollution or to reach any net-zero carbon emission targets.