GENEVA — When yet another round of global plastic treaty talks fell apart in Switzerland last month, many negotiators and civil society groups were plunged into despair.
“We’ve just wasted money, wasted time,” said Heni Unwin, a Māori marine scientist with the Aotearoa Plastic Pollution Alliance, just after talks to halt the environmental crisis collapsed. “We are the ones who get impacted with all of the trash left by all of the world [that] turns up on our shores.”
But through the gloom of yet another failed summit, some saw a glimmer of hope emanating from an unlikely source: China.
In its closing speech, the Asian superpower and world’s biggest plastic producer subtly changed its language on tackling the plastic crisis, admitting the problem has to do with the entire life cycle of plastic and thus raising hopes of a breakthrough at a next round of talks.
It comes as Beijing moves to fill a vacuum left by the United States’ withdrawal from global engagement under President Donald Trump and his “America First” agenda.
“They don’t go back when they make shifts like this,” said Dennis Clare, a legal adviser for Micronesia with nearly 20 years of experience in U.N. environment treaty negotiations, referring to China. He added that the country “has a lot of gravity, so things start to blow the way they flow.”
The stakes are high. The plastics industry currently accounts for 3.4 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions — that’s more than aviation — and plastic production is on track to almost triple by 2060. Plastic waste is flowing into the world’s oceans at a rate of around 10 million metric tons per year, and increasing.
In its efforts to tackle the problem, the United Nations has now hosted six rounds of talks since 2022. The European Union has been among those pushing for an ambitious treaty that puts limits on plastic production — while oil-producing countries, which see plastic as among the remaining growing markets for fossil fuels, have bitterly opposed any such measures.
The Chinese wild card
Countries in the self-named High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution — which backs a “comprehensive” approach addressing the full lifecycle of plastic — have long targeted China as a powerful potential ally. They face strong resistance from major oil-producing countries including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran — and, most recently, the U.S. under the Trump administration’s “drill, baby, drill” ethos (oil is the main raw material from which plastic is made).
While China is the world’s top consumer and producer of plastic, the country has also ushered in several restrictions on the production, sale and consumption of single-use plastics in a bid to stem a national pollution crisis. This has made it more aligned with high-ambition countries than some other major plastic producers.
Observers also see the country looking to expand its global influence via the U.N. — especially in the wake of the U.S. retreat from multilateralism. “We should firmly safeguard the status and authority of the U.N., and ensure its irreplaceable, key role in global governance,” President Xi Jinping said in a speech at a meeting of Asian leaders near Beijing on Sept. 1, attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“My sense is that, of course, they’re also seeing that space opening, generally around environment,” said David Azoulay of the Center for International Environmental Law. “And the U.S. retreating creates a vacuum that China will probably want to fill in their own way.”
That could work out well for high-ambition countries. China is an “important partner for the EU” in the talks, European Environment Commissioner Jessika Roswall told POLITICO during the Geneva negotiations.
“Our strategy since Busan has always been to break China away from Saudi [Arabia] and the U.S.,” said one negotiator from a country within the High Ambition Coalition, granted anonymity to discuss closed-door talks.
With China on board, they added, the assumption is that other major players including Russia and India, as well as Southeast Asian countries, will “become more comfortable” with a comprehensive plastic treaty.
Several delegates and observers noted more openness from China on several measures in Geneva, including those aimed at phasing out problematic plastic products — culminating in a public statement that many see as a seemingly subtle yet seismic shift.
“Plastic pollution is far more complex than we expected,” said Chinese representative Haijun Chen at the closing plenary session. “It runs through the entire chain of production, consumption and recycling and waste management, as well as relates to the transition of development models of over 190 U.N. countries.”
China’s assertion that plastic pollution stems from the full lifecycle of plastic — and is not solely a waste management issue, as claimed by the likes of Saudi Arabia and Iran — reflects a “break” from other, more reluctant plastic-producing countries, said the high-ambition negotiator. It follows a compromise made among some key delegations “hours before that plenary statement.”
“The question for us now is how to protect that understanding that was made that last night into a new meeting,” they added.
Isolate and attack
The broad contours of a compromise could include moving away from attempting to enforce a percentage reduction on plastic production — a red line for several countries, including China — and instead looking at other measures tackling the full plastic lifecycle, like global restrictions on certain kinds of “problematic” products.
That’s the gist of a draft treaty text released on the final day of plastic treaty talks last month — which garnered support from many high-ambition countries, but was knocked down by oil and plastic producers.
Some countries are “trying to block us from working on that text right now,” complained Danish Environment Minister Magnus Heunicke in a closing press conference.
Countries are insisting on “unrealistic elements,” countered Iran’s Massoud Rezvanian Rahaghi at the closing plenary, and employing “unfair and restricting tactics to exclude a large number of parties in very undemocratic ways.”
The hope, the anonymous high-ambition negotiator said, is that China’s shifting position will help to “isolate” the ringleaders of the oil producers’ group — namely the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.
“Hopefully you will see some of the countries in their group also isolate or move away from them. Like Egypt potentially, maybe others in North Africa,” they added.
If all else fails
But the talks cannot continue indefinitely.
The patience of smaller, poorer countries — increasingly resentful of having to pile resources into fruitless talks — is wearing thin, and financial support for the talks coming from countries that have been supporting the negotiations has a limit. While China’s shift and some elements of the most recent draft text encouraged some governments, there’s no guarantee the talks won’t collapse again.
At least one country that has been financially supporting the negotiations is looking into how the treaty talks have been run, checking for evidence of a “mismanaged process,” said the high-ambition negotiator, though they were not able to name the country. That could result in requests for changes to the process in hopes of moving forward more efficiently at a next round of meetings, the date for which has not yet been set.
Should the deadlock continue, though, there’s also the possibility of taking the process outside the current framework, explained Clare, the Micronesia adviser.
That could entail countries adding a specific plastic treaty protocol to other existing and adjacent agreements, like the Basel Convention — designed to control the movements of hazardous waste between nations — or the Rotterdam Convention, another global treaty aimed at managing hazardous chemicals and pesticides in international trade.
“The value of the process is that we all know where countries stand, so it wouldn’t take long to consummate an agreement among those who have similar positions,” said Clare. “The question would be, to what extent does that agreement have the scope to turn the tables on this problem?”
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