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Decision: Building a regime complex for marine plastic pollution — R0/PR5
Summary
This paper examines the challenge of negotiating a strong international treaty to govern the full lifecycle of plastics, from production to disposal. The authors argue that the current fragmented regime of overlapping agreements is insufficient and call for a unified, binding global plastics treaty. The paper offers strategic insights for diplomats and researchers involved in the UN plastics treaty negotiations.
The negotiations for a new treaty to govern the 'full lifecycle' of plastics face a major challenge: designing a strong treaty, quickly, that is acceptable to most of the international community of states. Although diplomats play a critical role in accomplishing this task, scholars and researchers represent a critical network of support, especially on the topic of treaty design. This article outlines a research agenda focused on the new treaty as part of a larger 'regime complex,' where the interfaces between the new treaty and existing agreements will strongly shape its efficacy, efficiency, and acceptance by states. It also begins to pursue this research agenda, by investigating the relationship between the ocean governance regime, especially the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the emerging plastics treaty. The article illustrates that the ocean governance regime offers important normative foundations, institutional models, lessons about treaty language, and possibilities for institutional linkage that can inform the design of the plastics treaty. It concludes by identifying several other avenues of useful research on the nascent plastics regime complex.