GENEVA: Talks on forging a landmark treaty to combat the scourge of plastic pollution were stumbling Saturday, with progress slow and countries wildly at odds on how far the proposed agreement should go. The negotiations, which opened on Tuesday, have four working days left to strike a legally-binding instrument that would tackle the growing problem choking the environment. In a blunt mid-way assessment, talks chair Luis Vayas Valdivieso warned the 184 countries negotiating at the United Nations that they had to get shifting to get a deal. “Progress made has not been sufficient,” Vayas told delegates.
“A real push to achieve our common goal is needed,” the Ecuadoran diplomat said, adding that Thursday was not a just deadline but “a date by which we must deliver. “Some articles still have unresolved issues and show little progress towards reaching a common understanding,” Vayas lamented. The key fracture is between countries that want to focus on waste management and others who want a more ambitious treaty that also cuts production and eliminates use of the most toxic chemicals. And with the talks relying on finding consensus, it has become a game of brinkmanship. A diplomatic source told reporters that many informal meetings had been scrambled together for Sunday’s day off to try and break the deadlock. “If nothing changes, we won’t get there,” the source added. Battle of the brackets Countries have reconvened in Geneva after the failure of the supposedly fifth and final round of negotiations in Busan, South Korea in 2024. After four days of talks, the draft text has ballooned from 22 to 35 pages — with the number of brackets in the text going up near five-fold to almost 1,500 as countries insert a blizzard of conflicting wishes and ideas. The talks are mandated to look at the full
life cycle of plastic
, from production to pollution, but some countries are unhappy with such a wide scope. Kuwait spoke up for the so-called Like-Minded Group — a nebulous cluster of mostly oil-producing nations which rejects production limits and wants to focus on treating waste. “Let us agree on what we can agree. Consensus must be the basis of all our decisions,” Kuwait insisted.
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