Environmental treaties are paralysed — here’s how we can do better

On 15 August in Geneva, Switzerland, a fifth round of negotiations towards a multilateral treaty on reducing plastic pollution collapsed. The chair announced that the committee had concluded its work — without producing a draft treaty. Governments had failed to agree on the proposed articles of the convention; no further negotiations were being suggested.

This failure reveals a weakness in all environmental treaty negotiations, whether new or existing ones: a consensus-driven process waters down action to the lowest common denominator. Only symptoms get addressed, not causes.