The Global Plastics Treaty: A Smokescreen to Produce More Oil?

The negotiations for the Global Plastics Treaty that concluded on 1 December 2024 in Busan, South Korea followed the same script as the most recent edition of the UN Climate Change Conference, the COP29.

Held in oil-rich Baku, Azerbaijan, COP29 was a success in forcing the world towards false solutions. The final agreement on a $300 billion climate fund was widely criticised for its inadequacy in meeting the climate needs of the poorer nations. Called the ‘Finance COP’, its goal was to improve financial support to developing countries in the form of the ‘New Collective Quantified Goal’ (NCQG). But what has come to be understood as ‘climate finance’ has very little to do with real money transfers and more to do with private finance and reverse capital flows from developing countries to developed countries in the form of increased debt burden from loans at market rate. This is possible because of an overarching preference for policy shaped by neoliberal climate economics that ignores issues of equity, historical responsibility and justice. The annual COP meetings held under the aegis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change have been a cop out from real climate solutions, especially in the last couple of years.

Similarly, the fifth round of negotiations of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Global Plastics Treaty (INC-5) ended without a  consensus on certain key issues regarding plastic pollution. The committee was the outcome of a March 2022 UN Environment Assembly resolution to develop a legal instrument to address the full life cycle of plastic, including its production, design and disposal. In this resolution, the member states of the UN Environment Programme agreed to a legally binding treaty with the hope that it would be a regulatory governance tool to address the harms of plastic pollution.

Production cap on virgin plastic, or new plastic produced from petrochemical feedstock, is a must to effectively address the problem of plastic pollution. INC-5 failed to come to an agreement on this, and a subsequent negotiation, the INC-5.2, is planned for 2025.

This blog post elaborates on why the treaty negotiations on production cap have been disappointing so far and the possible implications of a failed treaty. It also focusses on some of the complex linkages between the issues of plastic pollution and climate change.

A Push for More Plastic Production

The week-long INC-5 negotiations, with nearly 170 member countries in participation, witnessed an impasse on several contentious issues, the most divisive of which was the demand that countries set targets to cut virgin plastic-polymer production. The participants were divided into two groups: On the one hand, around a dozen nations, primarily comprising oil-producing states such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, opposed any limits to the production of plastic and were only willing to address the issue of plastic waste, subverting the negotiations. On the other hand, more than a hundred countries vehemently supported targets to limit plastic production.

As oil production gets more and more hemmed in by the energy transition to renewables, plastic is the future business model for oil-producing countries and companies. Western corporations like Exxon Mobil and Shell, and countries such as Saudi Arabia, the US and Russia are fully invested in continuing to defend revenue streams from oil production through the plastics industry. With crude petroleum continuing to be the primary feedstock in the production of polymers, the petrochemical industry needs to increase its production multifold for fossil fuels to have a profitable market.  An October 2024 report by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and data from the Global Plastics Outlook show that plastic production and use are on the rise and the world is on track to produce 736 million tons of plastic by 2040, a 70% increase from 2020 levels. That is good news for the fossil fuel industry but is catastrophic for a warming world fighting to end fossil fuel use.

The influence of the oil lobby on the treaty negotiations is evident. The Chair’s Text, which is the draft agreed to at INC-5—will serve as the starting point of negotiations in the next session. The text has no reference to crucial terms in climate change negotiations such as ‘fossil fuel’, ‘greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions’ or ‘carbon footprints’. This is striking but not surprising given the fact that oil lobbyists were the largest delegation with 220 members, outnumbering the delegations of the host, South Korea (140), and the European Union (191), which saw all its member states in participation. The text also places no emphasis on the increasing production of plastic and its impact on the environment. Furthermore, the definitions of terms such as ‘full lifecycle of plastic’ and ‘plastic pollution’, important for the effectiveness of the treaty, continue to be vehemently contested. An effective explanation of such terms must begin with a discussion on the extraction of fossil fuels to be turned into plastic—an enterprise not in the interests of the fossil fuel lobby.

At this juncture, it is important that the issue of plastic pollution not be viewed solely as a ‘waste problem’, which the oil-producing countries and companies continue to insist on in manner that has been self-serving, dishonest and misleading. Companies campaigning for an end to plastic pollution have produced 1,000 times more plastic than what they cleaned up. Generally, campaigns to end plastic pollution serve the dual purpose of, firstly, greenwashing fossil fuel–intensive business models and, secondly, tapping into delusive trends such as ‘green growth’. Campaigns to ‘end plastic pollution’ are designed to divert attention from the real problem—plastic production.

Expanding the Scope of the Plastic Problem

Like all forms of capitalist production, plastic production is dependent on unjust extraction from the Global South for the benefit of the Global North. Discussions on plastic pollution must focus on the complex linkages between environmental concerns and other vital concerns—including economic inequality; ethno-racial-imperial oppression and gender and sex domination; dispossession, expulsion and exclusion of migrants; and militarisation, political authoritarianism and police brutality. The following two points help better understand why the discourse on plastic pollution must go beyond treating it as a waste problem.

1. Pollution is colonialism: The defence of plastic production predominantly stems from the insistence to continue with a growth economy. As ecological economics has pointed out, a growth economy typically stresses on productivist aspects, which renders it ill-equipped to cater to concerns of diversity and minority interests. Max Liboiron, a professor of geography researching plastic pollution, says that ‘pollution is colonialism’, which is best understood as the violence of colonial land relations. Environmental damage is a symptom of such violence. The idea of ‘recycling’ plastic assumes access to Indigenous lands and points to the inequalities of spatial distribution. This explains why Africa, a continent having some of the lowest figures of plastic consumption, has become the dumping ground for the plastic waste of Western countries. Meanwhile, corporations and rich countries with high carbon footprints are entering into land deals with debt-stricken African nations for grabbing vast swathes of land to set up dubious carbon offset projects. These lead to forced evictions for the local and Indigenous communities.

2. Plastic is a climate change issue: The GHGs from the plastics industry hinder the global community’s ability to keep the earth’s temperature rise below 1.5° C. If plastic production and use continue to grow as planned, then by 2050, plastic alone would contribute more than 15% of global GHG emissions. The lifecycle of plastic involves 4 stages, namely: 1) extraction and transport; 2) refining and manufacture; 3) waste management; and 4) plastic in the environment. The first two stages account for the highest share of GHG emissions. But, oil-producing countries are determined to limit the Global Plastics Treaty to the last two stages, despite scientists recommending a production cap on plastic as the first in a list of essential elements to make the treaty a success.

In light of reports highlighting the climate impact of plastic production, it is imperative that the treaty frame plastic primarily as a problem of climate change and climate justice. However, industry capture of the climate debate has diverted focus from issues of equity and justice. The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) that addresses the inherent unfairness of the climate problem—that is, countries least responsible for the causes of climate change being unfairly burdened with its impacts—has been ignored. Questionable solutions such as emissions trading and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) continue to dominate the discourse on climate action because much of climate change law and policy are drawn from neoliberal economic thinking. Critical epistemologies can help re-orient climate negotiations towards the devastating social costs of carbon. Such an intervention is also necessary for the debate on plastic as it is critically linked with climate change.

Without a cap on production, the Global Plastics Treaty may end up being what Antonio Gramsci calls a ‘passive revolution’, a top-down initiative diverting attention from the need for systems change.

Such a revolution passively absorbs the less powerful into the system, leaving those in power undisturbed and the economic structure unchallenged. For plastic, this means that developing countries and least developed countries will suffer a greater number of deaths and other losses from pollution and global warming while developed countries will continue to defer to growth economics without any sanctions.

As reports suggest, deployment of available options such as substitution and recycling will only reduce pollution by a small volume. No matter how much is done to remedy pollution from used plastic, without limiting plastic production, there will be little success in fighting climate change and achieving climate justice.

About the Author

Sherley H. Dokiburra teaches law at the Damodaram Sanjivayya National Law University, Visakhapatnam and is a PhD scholar at NLSIU, Bengaluru. She has a master’s degree in law from NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad and a bachelor’s degree in law from National Law University, Delhi.