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Review: Indigenous rights, knowledge, and participation in the global plastics treaty — R1/PR6
Summary
This review examines barriers faced by Indigenous Peoples in participating in UN plastics treaty negotiations, highlighting that their disproportionate exposure to plastic pollution at every lifecycle stage is compounded by systemic exclusion from global policy processes. The authors argue that structural reforms are needed to ensure full and effective Indigenous participation and integration of traditional knowledge into binding treaty language.
Indigenous Peoples are disproportionately impacted at every stage of the plastic lifecycle, from the extraction of the fossil fuel feedstock and plastic production, to the widespread dispersal of maco-, micro- and nanoplastics in the natural environment. They face many barriers to their participation in UN processes and must constantly push for their rights to be upheld and for their full and effective participation to be secured. This constant basic struggle for Indigenous rights and participation can consume all the energy and efforts of Indigenous delegates in UN processes at the expense of all the other important knowledge and messages they carry from their communities and nations to address the very real and serious harms that have been inflicted on their territories and all the life within it. Negotiators at INC-5.2 have a great responsibility to address this serious global crisis, while being reminded that Indigenous Peoples, who are on the frontlines of the plastic pollution crisis, must be equal participants as experts of their own knowledge and science and participate in the process as rightsholders in all decision-making that affects them.