New round of negotiations for UN plastics treaty in the pipeline

A plastic bag and a piece of wood are floating in the water, surrounded by small fish

The formal INC-5.4 round of negotiations is officially scheduled for 13 to 24 March 2027.
 
Under the leadership of the new INC Chair, Julio Cordano (Chile), who was elected in February 2026 at the administrative session INC-5.3 in Geneva, a strategic roadmap involving several informal meetings has been drawn up to prepare a consensus-based draft text for an international, legally binding instrument to combat plastic pollution. The delegates at INC-5.2 in Geneva had been unable to agree on a treaty by the end of the session on 15 August 2025, as had been intended. On the path to the UN plastics treaty, two groups of countries with fundamentally different approaches to the issue are at odds. Whilst a High Ambition Coalition – including Europe, with Germany, and a number of island states – is calling for an ambitious agreement covering the entire life cycle of plastics, including binding production caps and bans on problematic chemicals, the so-called ‘petro-states’, such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, are resisting such interventions. They want to limit the treaty strictly to downstream waste management.
 
In preparation for INC-5.4, the new Chair, Julio Cordano, has sent four letters to INC members and organised a series of informal meetings to negotiate the text of the treaty. A final informal meeting ahead of INC-5.4 is scheduled for 25 January to 2 February 2027 to finalise the details. An official invitation to this meeting, including the exact dates and further information on the event schedule, is due to be announced. The preparations are primarily based on two documents published by the Chair in August 2026. An ‘Aid to Negotiations’ reference document is intended to serve as a consolidated guide for the drafting work and is available for download on the UNEP website. Another document provided in preparation for INC-5.4 contains possible elements from existing agreements for draft resolutions to be considered by the Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries, with a view to identifying potential work and next steps that could be undertaken following the adoption of the agreement by the Diplomatic Conference.
 
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