INC-2: The Second Global Plastics Treaty Negotiation

When and where: UNESCO headquarters, Paris, from 29 May to 2 June 2023. Over 1,700 participants attended, including roughly 700 delegates from 169 member states and 900 civil society representatives, plus industry observers.

Rocky Start:The session opened with major procedural friction rather than substance:

• Last-minute attendance caps limited civil society participation, particularly for underserved frontline groups including Indigenous peoples. Procedural delays hampered discussion. Civil society groups including GAIA and Break Free From Plastic staged a protest outside UNESCO headquarters over the restricted access andthe Secretariat subsequently relaxed the rules to allow more than one delegate per organization.
• A bigger, unresolved fight broke out over voting rules. Saudi Arabia, India, Russia, Brazil, and China insisted all decisions be made strictly by consensus, while the majority of members argued for a two-thirds majority vote when consensus couldn’t be reached. This dispute has followed the process ever since.
• As at INC-1, statements and procedural wrangling consumed so much time that substantive negotiations didn’t begin until the evening of day three.

Substance: Once talks got underway, delegates split into two parallel contact groups. One on the “what” of the treaty (objectives and core obligations), the other on the “how” (financing, capacity building, national action/implementation plans). Because of the condensed timeline, the INC could only spend one full day working through the “Options for Elements” document across the two groups.

Notable moments:French President Emmanuel Macron called plastic pollution a “ticking time bomb,” and UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said the linear plastics economy is “gushing pollution galore” and that the world “can’t recycle its way out of this mess.” More than 130 member states specifically called for binding, harmonized global rules.

Key outcome:INC-2 concluded with a mandate for the Chair (H.E. Gustavo Meza-Cuadra of Peru) to produce an initial “zero draft” treaty text, to be discussed at INC-3 in Nairobi in November 2023.

Overall assessment: Reactions were mixed to critical. Plastic Pollution Coalition described INC-2 as concluding “with a mix of high and low points, with results that range from underwhelming to deeply concerning,” and observers flagged that defining and differentiating the thousands of chemicals, plastics, and products across the supply chain would be a critical issue for future sessions.