Treaty to end plastic pollution: More discord than convergence in the new draft released

GENEVA: Delegates negotiating the world’s first legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution are heading into a high‑stakes stocktake plenary with a daunting reality. The latest Assembled Text released in the early hours of Saturday shows not convergence, but a proliferation of disagreements.

The new draft — which compiles the outputs of four contact groups after days of line‑by‑line wrangling — bristles with bracketed text, the tell‑tale markers of unresolved options. According to a count, there are more than options. According to a count, there are more than 1,500 bracketed sections in the Assembled Text, up from roughly 370 in the Chair’s Text tabled last December. Each set of brackets represents competing phrases, entire clauses, or even whole paragraphs still up for negotiation.

Expanded preamble, broader scope

Compared to the Chair’s version, the Assembled Text reflects a greatly expanded preamble. It introduces new concepts: recognition of “mountain environments” alongside marine ecosystems, detailed human rights references — from the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to the right to a clean, healthyenvironment — and explicit mention of vulnerable groups such as waste pickers, coastal communities, and people of African descent.

The Chair’s original wording was more concise, largely focusing on existing multilateral environmental agreements and sustainable development. Now, multiple alternative formulations sit side by side in brackets, underscoring ideological divides over how far the treaty’s values and scope should extend.Article 3 (Problematic Plastic Products) in both drafts contains long sub‑lists of criteria for banning or restricting certain items, such as single‑use cutlery, plastic‑stemmed cotton buds, and microbeads. In the new text, there are even more qualifiers — for example, factors like food and water security, cultural feasibility, availability and affordability of alternatives — each of which is bracketed, reflecting North–South divides.Developing countries, supported by broader coalition language, argue for flexibility based on “national circumstances, capacities, and socio‑economic considerations,” insisting that obligations must be matched with means of implementation. The Chair’s earlier draft had cleaner, more unified provisions.Some of the most contentious new language concerns “unilateral coercive measures,” “sovereignty,” and explicit condemnations of trade restrictions. These reflect heightened geopolitical sensitivities since December, as negotiations have increasingly intersected with trade, development, and human rights debates.Troublingly, Melissa added, the draft text is misleading because it presents all options as having the same weight, when in fact, some text additions have the support of over a hundred countries and some with only one. An effort to include an article on scope with the goal of limiting the treaty to start at product design, rather than the full lifecycle of plastic has been given a placeholder.

Heading into plenary, it is unclear whether Member States will agree to use the text as the basis for ongoing negotiations, give the Chair a mandate to prepare a new text, or something else. The INC cannot continue with the status quo and expect theSomething will have to change for us to see a treaty text that meaningfully delivers on the promise to end plastic pollution, she added.