How to tackle environmental issues when the world can’t agree
The failure to agree a global treaty on plastic pollution highlights how the UN’s requirement for unanimity holds back environmental policy, but there are better ways to make progress
By Madeleine Cuff
21 August 2025
An artwork in Geneva, Switzerland, where talks on a global plastic treaty took place last week
FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images
On 14 August, exhausted UN delegates filed into a windowless plenary hall, after hours of intensive debate and little sleep, to watch their hopes of a global treaty to tackle plastic pollution evaporate.
The talks, which ran for two weeks in Geneva, Switzerland, were the second attempt to thrash out an international deal to stem the tide of this form of pollution.
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But at the eleventh hour, they fell apart, with countries divided on whether the treaty should not only contain measures to boost recycling rates, but also targets to reduce plastic production at source.
Oil-producing states – which will increasingly rely on the plastics sector for revenue as demand for petrol and diesel wanes – opposed attempts to curb production.
Any treaty needed unanimous support to pass, and with nations refusing to budge from their “red lines”, the talks collapsed.
