Plastics treaty’s penultimate talks: Five takeaways

After INC-4, only one meeting is left to agree a global treaty to limit plastics pollution. With festering disagreements surrounding a cap on plastic production, success is far from assured.

A world-first agreement to limit plastic pollution is meant to be completed this year.

In theory, this could trigger major changes in many people’s everyday lives, reducing the huge amounts of plastic packaging that are unpeeled and disposed of every day; unclogging rivers and seas; and reducing harms to human health.

In the past two years, 15 million tonnes of plastic have entered the ocean. In 2022, the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) adopted a resolution to develop a globally binding treaty that would reduce the problem via five meetings: “international negotiating committees”, or INCs.

In April, 170 countries met in Ottawa, Canada, to attend the fourth meeting. But festering disagreements flared up again, particularly on whether the treaty should include a global cap on plastic production. Hopes for a deal now depend on with December’s final INC, to be hosted in Busan, Korea.

Here, Dialogue Earth surveys the five key takeaways from Ottawa.