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Process without progress: the sixth session of negotiations on a treaty to end plastic pollution (INC-5.2)
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In August 2025, countries met in Geneva to try to finalize a global treaty limiting plastic pollution, but talks stalled without an agreement due to disagreements over key issues like limiting plastic production and regulating harmful chemical additives. This matters because plastics—and the microplastics and chemicals they shed—are found in our food, water, and even our bodies, and without binding international rules, the flow of plastic pollution (and the health risks that come with it) will likely keep growing unchecked.
Abstract The second part of the fifth session of the UN’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5.2) on plastic pollution was held at the Palais des Nations in Geneva from 5 to 15 August 2025. Despite a sense of urgency, 2,600 participants, including delegations from 183 countries and hundreds of observers, negotiators left Geneva without consensus on a final agreement. Delegates decided to put the negotiations on pause, demonstrating a continued commitment but deep divergences in opinions over core aspects of the agreement, such as scope and ambition, inclusion of additives, production controls, and financing mechanisms. Drawing on our ethnographic participant observation methodology and analysis of official documents, this paper outlines the negotiation dynamics and assesses how the emerging treaty text developed over the negotiation session at INC-5.2, and if no treaty is to come from this process, what alternatives there may be outside the formal negotiation process.
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Researchers analyzed the second session of the fifth round of global plastics treaty negotiations (INC-5.2), finding that talks ended without agreement due to persistent divisions over production caps and financial mechanisms, though areas of convergence emerged that leave a path forward open.
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