Seoul Gazette - Global plastic pollution treaty talks extended in 'haze' of confusion

Ten days of negotiations at the United Nations in Geneva were due to wrap up on Thursday but with 23 minutes of the day left, the talks were prolonged.

However, after a day of frantic negotiations, there were few signs that rival country blocs were any closer to bridging their differences and striking a text on dealing with the scourge of plastic that pollutes land, oceans and people's bodies.

"As consultations of my revised draft text are still ongoing, this plenary is therefore adjourned, to be convened on August 15, 2025, at a time to be announced," talks chair Luis Vayas Valdivieso said before gavelling the session closed.

The plenary session -- bringing all 185 negotiating countries together in the UN Palais des Nations' main assembly hall -- lasted less than a minute, with shocked reactions among the delegates packing the room.

- 'Complete haze' -

"It's such a mess. I've never seen that. The room is full of people standing, trying to understand what's going on," Aleksandar Rankovic from The Common Initiative think-tank, told AFP.

"It smells like no deal.

"The room is very discontented," he said, but "even if people don't believe that a deal is achievable this time, they also might want to be pushing the text in their direction up to the very last minute".

Throughout the day, Ecuadoran diplomat Vayas was doing the rounds between regional delegations, trying to stitch together a consensus agreement following a botched attempt on Wednesday.

"We are in a complete haze. We've got the impression something is missing," a diplomatic source in one of the regional delegations told AFP.

During the long hours of waiting, backroom negotiations and informal meetings, one head of delegation told AFP they were convinced there would be another "compromise" text coming, while another, from another continent, despaired at seeing "neither text nor process", fearing a complete failure of the long negotiations that began more than two years ago in Nairobi.

- Elusive middle ground -

After three years of negotiations, nations wanting bold action to turn the tide on plastic garbage were trying to build last-minute bridges with a group of oil-producing states.

"We need to have a coherent global treaty. We can't do it on our own," said Environment Minister Deborah Barasa of Kenya, a member of the High Ambition Coalition seeking aggressive action on plastic waste.

Barasa told AFP that nations could strike a treaty now, then work out some of the finer details down the line.

"We need to come to a middle ground," she said. "And then we can have a step-wise approach in terms of building up this treaty... and ending plastic pollution."

"We need to leave with the treaty," she added.

Back-to-back regional and cross-regional groups huddled in meetings throughout Thursday.

The High Ambition Coalition, which includes the European Union, Britain and Canada, and many African and Latin American countries, wants to see language on reducing plastic production and the phasing out of toxic chemicals used in plastics.

A cluster of mostly oil-producing states calling themselves the Like-Minded Group -- including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Russia, Iran, and Malaysia -- want the treaty to focus primarily on waste management.

- Macron's call to action

The plastic pollution problem is so ubiquitous that microplastics have been found on the highest mountain peaks, in the deepest ocean trench and scattered throughout almost every part of the human body.

On current trends, annual production of fossil-fuel-based plastics will nearly triple by 2060 to 1.2 billion tonnes, while waste will exceed one billion tonnes, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

With 15 million tonnes of plastic dumped in the ocean every minute, French President Emmanuel Macron asked: "What are we waiting for to act?"

"I urge all states gathered in Geneva to adopt an agreement that truly meets the scale of this environmental and public health emergency," he posted on X.

C.Park--SG