International negotiations to develop a plastic pollution treaty was extended in extremis until Friday by the diplomat who presides over the debates in Geneva, opening a frail hope for compromise, but without clear vision of the end of the process.
“As the consultations on my revised text project are still underway, this plenary is therefore adjourned and will meet on August 15, 2025, at one hour to be determined,” said Luis Vayas Valdivieso, the Ecuadorian diplomat who presides over negotiations in Geneva.
Theoretically, the CNI5-2 negotiation sequence, which started in Geneva on August 5, was to stop at local midnight (10:00 p.m. GMT) on August 14.
For long hours of waiting, corridor negotiations, informal meetings Thursday, a delegation chief said to AFP that he was convinced that there will be a text of compromise, while another, who came from another continent, desperate to see “neither text nor instructions”, fearing a complete failure of the long negotiation started more than two years ago.
“It’s such a bazaar. I have never seen that!” commented for AFP, Aleksandar Rankovic, an observer from the group of reflection The Common Initiative.
In fact, Mr. Vayas underwent a severe rebuff on Wednesday when his synthetic text was rejected by almost all of the United Nations Plenary Assembly bringing together some 185 countries.
Since then he has worked, directly with regional delegations to try to find an agreement resolving the quadrature of the circle between so -called strong ambition countries and those who oppose any strong regulation of the plastic industry, mainly petroleum or plastic producers.
During the afternoon, the plenary session announced in the morning was postponed at 6:00 p.m., 7:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m. to finally stand just before midnight local time. She only lasted a few minutes.
The “ambitious”, including the European Union, Canada, Australia, many countries in Latin America, Africa and islands, want to clean the plastic planet that begins to gangrener and affects human health.
Opposite, mainly oil countries which refuse any constraint on plastic production and any ban on dangerous molecules or additives.
“The lack of ambition in the text presented (Wednesday) to the United Nations is unacceptable,” said French president Emmanuel Macron on social networks on Thursday.
Under the eye of representatives of the petrochemical industries present in the corridors, the countries represented had already failed once to produce a common text during the last sequence of negotiations, in Busan in South Korea at the end of 2024.
The subject is all the more important since the planet has produced more plastic since 2000 than during the previous 50 years, mostly single -use products and packaging and the trend accelerates: if nothing is done, current production, of some 450 million tonnes per year, should triple by 2060, according to OECD forecasts. However, less than 10% is recycled.
Posted on August 15 at 12:31 a.m., AFP