Global plastic pollution treaty

Formats of negotiations

During INC sessions, negotiations took place in various formats.

• Contact groups: Negotiations based on specific articles of the treaty text. All states with delegations participate and can raise their voice. This format was open to observers but with no possibility for interventions. Usually multiple contact groups occurred simultaneously.
• Regional meetings: Closed coordination meetings to discuss and align positions among a certain subgroup of member states, for example based on UN Regional Groups or other groups such as the High Ambition Coalition. Few regional meetings permitted the presence of observers, at least partially.
• Informals: Closed negotiations in an informal framework but organizational aspects (such as duration and room arrangements) might still facilitated by the INC Secretariat. Informal-informals (also known as infinfs) are more casual negotiation settings.
• Plenaries: Official assembly by all negotiating member states. They are used to open and close INC sessions and to report on progress of negotiations. Plenaries are open to observers and are also broadcast and recorded. Observers united as alliances might be able to contribute short interventions if the INC Secretariat permits. A total of 29 plenaries were held during all six negotiation sessions.

Besides these formal formats of negotiations delegates and observers were able to participate in side events, press conferences and so on.

Content

Members agreed that the treaty should be international in scope, legally binding, and address the full life cycle of plastics, including their design, production, and disposal. It has been argued that chemicals contained in plastics such as additives, processing aids, and unintentionally added substances need to be addressed too.

The Earth Negotiations Bulletin provided a daily overview of the proceeding of negotiations.

Criticism of the treaty proceedings

Different aspects of the treaty process were criticized, for example the repeated failure to conclude the process in the projected time period, differences in the member states' capacity to send delegates, and the strong presence of industry lobbyists. Reforms of the treaty process are demanded by researchers demanding evidence-based decision making and a meaningful inclusion of civil society. Some researchers suggested to move global negotiations out of the UNEP framework, to allow countries who want to obtain a strong treaty to establish their own rules of procedures.

Support for the treaty

In the lead-up to UNEA-5.2, the majority of UN member states had expressed their support for a global treaty. During the treaty negotiations the High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution formed with the goal to obtain an ambitious treaty text.

Other groups making public declarations about the need for a treaty included the business sector, civil society, indigenous peoples, workers, trade unions, waste pickers and scientists.

Greenpeace activists hung banners stating "Big Oil Polluting Inside" and "Plastic Treaty Not For Sale" from the entrance to the Palais the Nations and sprayed the road black to point out industry influence.

The artist Benjamin Von Wong installed an art piece at the Palais de Nations as "a public call for world leaders to finalize an ambitious treaty".