How to Revive a Global Treaty on Plastics Pollution

Conventional wisdom says the treaty is dead. That's not so.

Photo by Naja Bertolt Jensen on Unsplash

In 2022, countries agreed to negotiate an international treaty to end plastics pollution. They gave themselves a two-year deadline to finalize the treaty text — and needless to say, that deadline has not been met.

The conventional wisdom is that these treaty negotiations are hopelessly gridlocked, with some countries pushing for a wide-ranging agreement while others insist on something far more narrow. In years of negotiation there has been little progress to bridge this divide. But according to my guest today, Maria Ivanova, there is a potential path forward.

Maria Ivanova is one of the world’s leading experts on international environmental treaties. She is the Director of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University and Co-Director of the Plastics Center at Northeastern. We kick off discussing the fundamentally global nature of plastics pollution — and why this treaty process was launched when it was in 2022. We then turn to a longer conversation about the key geopolitical divisions that have stymied progress, before Maria Ivanova explains how countries might move beyond seemingly intractable positions and finally kickstart progress toward a binding international treaty on plastics pollution.

Plastics pollution is a global problem that requires international cooperation to confront and this treaty offers a path forward if compromise can be found. Our conversation is freely available across all podcast listening apps, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can listen directly below and subscribe to Global Dispatches to get these conversations delivered directly to your inbox.

This episode is produced in partnership with Lex International Fund, a philanthropic initiative dedicated to strengthening international law to solve global challenges. It’s part of our ongoing series highlighting the real-world impact of treaties on state behavior, called “When Treaties Work.”

Transcript edited for clarity

Mark Leon Goldberg: Maria, I know that you are just back from the United Nations Environment Assembly at the United Nations Environment Program headquarters in Nairobi. This is a big international conference where the topic that we’ll be discussing today, a way to potentially revive a stalled plastics treaty negotiation, was very much a part of the conversation in Nairobi. But before we get there, I’d love to have you take listeners back a little bit and explain the why. Why is there a need and diplomatic momentum for a plastics treaty?

Maria Ivanova: It is one of the most consequential international negotiations that we find ourselves in. It started in March of 2022 at the UN Environment Assembly, at the time when Rwanda and Peru jointly proposed a resolution to end plastic pollution, and thus to negotiate a global treaty on eliminating plastic pollution. So, the logic for this treaty was that the plastic has increased exponentially in the economies worldwide, and the pollution has been choking rivers, coastal areas, and more and more land areas.

And so, Rwanda, which is a small landlocked country, and Peru, abutting country or a coastal state, joined forces together, two small states, to create a global coalition to eliminate plastic pollution. So that was the initial motivation. But the mandate of that resolution goes well beyond waste. The resolution then explicitly recognized that plastic is a transboundary problem, and that resolution calls for a full lifecycle approach, which includes sustainable production, product design, waste management, circularity. And that is the issue that countries can’t quite agree, what is the scope of this treaty? So, therefore, negotiations have been continuing, have stalled at the moment, and are now continuing again.

Mark Leon Goldberg: On the issue of plastics and the plastics life cycle itself, can you just explain to listeners who are not as familiar like what is the transboundary life cycle of plastics and the potential harms that result from some of this life cycle that this treaty is seeking to confront?

Maria Ivanova: Plastics have become woven into every aspect of modern life. Yet the rules of trade, the choices that are made in product design, the consequences that are borne by human health, by ecosystems are not all moving in the same direction. And national action is essential, but it’s not sufficient. And this is what the treaty is about because plastics form a global material systems.

They are designed in one country, they’re manufactured in another, they’re consumed in a third, and they’re discarded in a fourth. And so, no nation, however determined and committed, can govern the system that is so interconnected on its own. So, the life cycle of plastics is a global system that cannot be governed by any one country alone. This is why we need a global treaty on plastics.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, in 2022, Rwanda and Peru put forward a proposal to kickstart a process to draft a treaty to confront plastics pollution. Now, my understanding was this was supposed to be done by now, yet it’s not. So, can you tell me a little bit about what went wrong? Take me a little bit into these negotiations.

Maria Ivanova: Yes, the resolution was proposed in 2022. And the expectation, the desire was that the negotiations will conclude within a two-year time frame by 2024. And that has not happened. I have to say, as a scholar of global environmental governance and multilateral environmental agreements, there have been no multilateral environmental agreements negotiated within two years. So, it takes time to negotiate a global treaty. And one so complex and so multifaceted as a plastics treaty cannot be done within two years.

So, the negotiations have not failed. They are continuing. And the sign of failure would be silence. What you’re seeing right now is actually a pause for countries to rethink, restart, and be at the negotiation table. They’re continuing to be at that negotiation table, and the process continues.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, what were, though, some of the key points of differences between groups of countries that were participating in this negotiation process?

Maria Ivanova: The core disagreements revolve around scope. What is the treaty about? When we say eliminate plastic pollution, some countries think we need to eliminate waste. So, let’s focus on waste management. Other countries say, “No, we have to move upstream. We have to regulate production. If we put a cap on the amount of plastic we produce, we, over time, will eventually eliminate waste.” But the resolution itself does not clearly say this is the scope of the treaty. And so, without agreement on scope, countries have been going around the negotiations with incompatible red lines. So, some say our red lines are just about waste. Others say our red lines are that we have to have production within the treaty. And so, this is the core of the tension among the different countries. We have producer countries and waste-bearing countries.

Mark Leon Goldberg: And just broadly, which countries are we speaking of when we discuss the two different sides of that key divide that you describe?

Maria Ivanova: So, when we think of producer countries, that means plastic producer countries, whose economies depend on the production of that material, we’re thinking about fossil fuel-producing countries. So think about the Gulf countries. Think about the United States. Think about China. When we think about the countries that are bearing the cost of plastic pollution, we think about small island developing states on whose beaches and whose coastlines, a lot of plastic wash and they choke ecosystems. So, we think about the smaller states, the coastal states, who do not have a stake in production but are bearing a disproportionately large burden of the pollution.

Mark Leon Goldberg: And what about Europe in that formulation?

Maria Ivanova: Europe is an interesting space because some countries in Europe, like Germany, for example, are producers, but many countries are not. Norway is a very interesting country that has a very significant oil producing industry, and at the same time very stringent environmental regulations, and has been the co-chair of the High Ambition Coalition in the Plastic Treaty.

Mark Leon Goldberg: And the High Ambition Coalition is the group of countries that want to control production or put some sort of limits on production, as opposed to just focusing on dealing with waste.

Maria Ivanova: Exactly. And Norway and Rwanda are the two chairs of the High Ambition Coalition.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, you have, I mean, this seemingly intractable divide between large and important groups of countries, presumably like a lot of the larger economies are the ones in which are not wanting to put limits on plastic production. But probably most of the world comes from countries that want to focus on limiting production. Is that like a fair assessment?

Maria Ivanova: Yes, indeed. Most of the countries in the world are in the camp that would like to put some structures, some restriction on production. There are a few countries that are the plastic-producing countries. But if you actually compare by GDP or by the number of people living in those countries, you would see an almost equal level.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, if this is the fundamental issue that is stalling progress on a plastics treaty, how do we get past it?

Maria Ivanova: Well, it’s a challenge. Countries have to sit down and talk with each other in informal settings. What the official negotiation processes often do is bring countries together around this big table, where you make official statements. And what we have seen over the past two years is countries to restate their position again and again and again. And that’s what happens in the formal spaces. Once you exit the formal spaces and sit down and talk to each other face to face in a process that has more of an informality, more of a trust space, then tradeoffs start to appear.

And Maurice Strong, who was the Secretary-General of the first environmental Conference in 1972, the Stockholm Conference, said the process is the policy. And so, to me, the key of breaking the stalemate right now would be in having a process that allows countries to see beyond their official positions, and see why each of them holds a national position so tightly that it can’t compromise in the official space. We need informal spaces where you have trust.

Mark Leon Goldberg: And what might those informal spaces look like or be?

Maria Ivanova: Often, in these international negotiations, you have the friends of the chair groups. You have informal consultations. They’re even called informal informals. During the Geneva negotiations…

Mark Leon Goldberg: And the Geneva negotiations were the most recent formal negotiating process for this treaty. Correct? And that was in August?

Maria Ivanova: Correct. In August of this year, countries convened for what they call INC 5.2, Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, Session 5, Round 2.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Huh.

Maria Ivanova: That meant the continuation of the negotiations. And yes, they’re official. But there was one day of informal negotiations and the chair at the time, Luis Valles, he said that more progress was made in the informals than in months of formal negotiations. So, it is really important to be able to sit down in a circle, figuratively speaking, and hear each other out. Because at the core, this treaty is about existential politics. For some countries, the oil-producing states, the threat to their economy by eliminating plastic production is going to be significant. For other countries, like the small island developing states, the threat to their ecological survival by the pollution that they’re experiencing is also existential.

And so, we need to figure out how to come to a space where none of these countries will lose their ability to survive.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, from those informal consultations, do you see a potential compromise that might take hold, and what might that compromise look like?

Maria Ivanova: So, I would not call it a compromise. In compromises, everybody loses. I would call it a tradeoff, or a space where we come to the issues that matter to all of us. And I think that the bridge between production and waste is design. It is through design that we can determine the materials that we choose, the chemicals that we embed in plastics, whether products can be reused or recycled, whether they retain value or become pollution. And so, when design is thoughtful, responsibility will follow. When design is not, even the strongest waste systems are overwhelmed. So, I see a focus on design as that space where countries could come together to a tradeoff, to an agreement, even a compromise.

Mark Leon Goldberg: And do you see any individuals in this space, who are government officials, adopting that view and trying to push that forward? Because it’s one thing for you as an academic expert, it’s another thing for civil society members to raise this as a potential opportunity for moving the treaty negotiations forward. But are, to your knowledge, individual negotiators or representatives of member states yet taking this up?

Maria Ivanova: I don’t know yet, officially, but I just spoke in Nairobi to a gathering that Norway and the World Economic Forum convened on these issues. So, I gave a talk calling for design to become a bridge. I have seen several companies engage in the negotiations, arguing that design is an important way to bridge pollution and production. And I think that governments will come around. But indeed, if we want these informal spaces, those of us who are on the outside will not necessarily be able to say, “Here are the people in the government that support this position quite yet.”

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, speaking of Nairobi, again, this was the big United Nations Environment Assembly, and plastics were an issue discussed. Did you see anything there that maybe suggested to you that this idea of harnessing informal spaces for progressing on this potential treaty is taking hold?

Maria Ivanova: Yes. In Nairobi, we saw these conversations continue. But Nairobi was not an INC, right? It was not an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee space. Nairobi was the UN Environment Assembly. So, countries would convene there and discuss other issues. But the issue of the plastics treaty remained on the agenda in these parallel conversations and discussions. What we are gearing up toward is the election of a new chair of the process of this Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee process that election will happen in February in Geneva. And so, we saw the discussions and candidates that were there in Nairobi, so the informal conversations continue. And to come back to your original question about the almost stalemate of the treaty, it is not because there is no silence. The conversation continues.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, I’m fascinated by the fact that you said that there is an upcoming election to elect a new chair of the Negotiating Committee because having interviewed you over the years, several times, Maria, I know that you put a lot of stock into the value of individuals, in their ability to steer these processes. In fact, I know you even wrote a book about it. So, I presume, therefore, that you see this election as potentially very impactful on the fate of these negotiations.

Maria Ivanova: Yes, I do. The next chair of this process will have the opportunity to shape, reshape the conversation, to restart it, and to open up the negotiations to new ideas, but also to continue what has worked. If we take a step back and think about climate and what many said the failed climate negotiations in Copenhagen in 2009, we saw the new chair of that process, or the new executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, really restart the process, open up the doors to non-governmental entities, and, ultimately, that process was successful in the Paris Agreement that we just celebrated the 10th anniversary of.

So, individuals matter. They shape institutions. But they are also shaped by institutional setups. So, for the next chair, it will be really important that they have a very strong collaborative relationship with the Secretariat that UNEP has established and with UNEP as an institution, and that they work with the bureau of this process, which is several countries, their leadership. So, you have member states and you have the institutions of the United Nations, and you have an individual that chair, who is responsible to be weighing all of these different interests and have a vision for moving forward.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, I always like to wrap up these kinds of conversations by asking, what are the key moments or inflection points coming up that will suggest to you whether or not progress can be made? And it seems that this election is a key moment for the future of this treaty process.

Maria Ivanova: Correct. The election of a new chair is a key moment. It will take place in early February in Geneva. And having new leadership will open up a space for continued negotiations. But also for a reset of the process.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Beyond this new chair, what else do you think is needed to move forward on this treaty?

Maria Ivanova: So, to move forward, we will be selecting new leadership. And so, number one, in terms of key elements for being effective and being successful is leadership and trust in the process. The election of the new chair in February creates an opportunity for a reset. But trust must be rebuilt. And the blame game that we have witnessed must end. This is not an issue of heroes and villains. This is an issue of countries coming together to solve a common problem. Second, we need science to be integrated with diplomacy. Scientific evidence now on health, on ecosystems, and on economics is mounting, and it must anchor the negotiations. But science alone is not enough. It must be translated through diplomacy.

Finally, we need a courage coalition. Not all countries will move at the same pace, but a coalition of countries who are willing to lead could move first and could create momentum. So, I suggest that we create a courage coalition of countries who can demonstrate that ambitious and workable governance can be attained.

Mark Leon Goldberg: So, what countries might make up this courage coalition, in your view?

Maria Ivanova: I think any country can be part of a courage coalition. That means we can show how we can manage waste better. We can show how to do without plastics or ban plastics like Rwanda, for example. Or we can show how to design things differently, like Norway, for example, who has done wonders in their small economy, both dependent on fossil fuels and engaged in environmental protection. So, a Courage coalition can be a group of countries who are both producers or consumers. Any country who is willing to go above and beyond a voluntary coalition, not a negotiating space, but a space where we can learn from each other, where we could bring our vulnerabilities and try to resolve the problem in new ways.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Maria, as always, thank you so much for your time. I love learning from you on all things environmental global governance.

Maria Ivanova: Thank you, Mark. Appreciate it.

Mark Leon Goldberg: Thanks for listening to Global Dispatches. The show is produced by me, Mark Leon Goldberg. It is edited and mixed by Levi Sharpe. If you are listening on Apple Podcasts, make sure to follow the show and enable automatic downloads to get new episodes as soon as they’re released. On Spotify, tap the bell icon to get a notification when we publish new episodes. And, of course, please visit globaldispatches.org to get on our free mailing list, get in touch with me, and access our full archive. Thank you!