As the INC-5.2 Global Plastics Treaty negotiations came to an end in Geneva, Switzerland, on Friday, August 15, 2025, affected groups aligned for justice have expressed strong disapproval of the treaty process and the state of the chair’s proposal text.
Indigenous Peoples, waste pickers, trade union workers, youth, and fenceline communities are drawing the line and are amplifying a shared message: The negotiations in Geneva made achieving an inclusive just transition impossible, by design.
During an August 13, 2025, press conference, consisting of justice-aligned groups, Aakaluk Adrienne Blatchford, an Inupiaq mother and land defender, testified to the embodied violence of erasures and exclusions at INC-5.2. Representing the Indigenous Environmental Network, she insisted, “A treaty about us, without us, is erasing history. Indigenous Peoples, waste pickers, People of Color, marginalised fenceline and frontline communities are here. Our bodies are born on the line. We will hold the line because we are the line.”
Critiquing the Unjust Process
The Just Transition Alliance critiqued negotiations taking place behind closed doors at INC-5, the Global Plastics Treaty negotiations in November 2024. Unacceptably, this violation of environmental justice principles continued at INC-5.2.
John Beard, of Port Arthur Community Action Network, decried the failures during the Global Plastics Treaty negotiation.
He said: “The redlining and bracketing acts of others have once again sacrificed us and our communities. They and the industry continue to devalue our lives, mute our voices, but we refuse to be sacrificed any further. Here we draw the line on their red line; an impotent treaty serves no one.
“We’ve been locked out of the meetings.”
Much of the negotiations were moved to closed informal sessions during the latter half of week one, continuing into week two. Four of the plenary sessions during INC-5.2 failed to open the floor to observers and their statements. The only publicly broadcast sessions of the negotiations were the plenaries. Failing to open the floor to observer statements undermined accountability to the watching world and further sidelined voices marginalised by dominant systems and structures of power. During INC-5.2, a member state delegation even proposed that observer participation should be tied to consensus.
Just transition depends on transparency and accountability to those most harmed by exploitative systems, not a consensus motivated by watered-down ambition that seeks to evaporate the collective strength and knowledges of Indigenous Peoples, frontline workers and waste pickers, and fenceline communities.
The United Nations Environment Programme also removed the option to host official side events, which were a successful way for movement groups to demonstrate solidarity and publicly name our priorities at INC-5. Concerningly, this exclusive decision made it harder to track side events being held by problematic actors outside the conference venue. For example, the plastic crediting organisation PCX held a side event that was not well-advertised to movement groups. This communication concern creates a host of problems, including limiting possibilities for intergenerational conversations and collaborations.
Nayana Cordeiro da Silva, of Youth Plastic Action Network and the Children and Youth Major Group, asserted: “Intergenerational equity is at the essence of protecting current and future generations.”
All affected groups need access to policy spaces, ample opportunities to participate and lead, and more physical seats in the negotiating rooms to ensure processes are accountable to those most harmed. Moreover, Indigenous Peoples must be recognized as distinct rightsholders, adhering to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and should not be conflated with other observers, such as NGOs and industry. This recognition also requires obtaining Free, Prior, and Informed Consent.
Signaling Dangerous Issues in the Treaty
While there is much to critique about the Global Plastics Treaty chair’s text, the group especially opposes the deletion of key articles focusing on plastic production cuts and supporting health. We also condemn the text’s fully inadequate engagement with just transition.
Former Article 6 on supply-side measures was removed from the draft text, resulting in plastic production cuts not being included. Treaty drafters also deleted former Article 19 on health. Taken together, these eliminations severely weaken the treaty’s ability to prevent damaging health and environmental impacts caused by the full impact-cycle of plastics, from extraction to disposal and remediation.
Vi Pangunnaaq Waghiyi, a Yupik Mother and Grandmother and Tribal Citizen of the Native Village of Savoonga, linked plastics inextricably to health harms by describing the devastation of the arctic from microplastics.
As the Environmental Health and Justice Director with Alaska Community Action on Toxics, she testified, “This has resulted in environmental violence. We are being contaminated without our consent …. In the current plastics treaty negotiations, states have stripped essential language on health impacts, the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the explicit listing of chemicals.” Blatchford similarly insisted, “The time is now for divestment from the petro-chemical industries, identifying and banning chemicals of concern and false solutions that allow big producers to continue business as usual. Indigenous Peoples will continue to show up to hold the line.”
The indispensable Just Transition section (now Article 9) of the treaty text is far too weak. Crucially, this article remains voluntary and repeatedly uses the language of “as appropriate” and “should,” rather than “shall.”
Just Transition Alliance Policy Organiser, Fernando Tormos-Aponte, also raised strong concerns with the article’s wording.
He cautioned: “The voluntary nature of just transition language weakens the prospects of holding governments accountable to their treaty obligations to compensate and include groups impacted by the plastic pollution crisis in decisions about how to address it and change fossil-fuel-based economies. The Paris Agreement on Climate is a telling example, where just transition was only mentioned in the preamble, and after 10 years, we have only gotten dialogues about just transition but no real commitments to enact it. These delays and weak policy efforts are at odds with the urgency of addressing the problem and neglect the historic and ongoing harms that various groups experience.”
The Just Transition Article also fails to mention and focus on Indigenous Peoples, a glaring oversight and dismissal of groups calling for an inclusive just transition rooted in Indigenous Traditional Knowledge.
As Soledad Mella Vidal, a Mapuche woman with the International Alliance of Waste Pickers, stated, “Over 40 million waste pickers are counting on member states to ensure a legally binding commitment to a just transition where no one is left behind.”
Recommitting to Just Transition with Frontline-Led Solutions
Frontline groups say they have the solutions for justly transitioning toward flourishing communities that are free of plastics pollution and poisoning.
“We will continue to call for and practice evidence-based and frontline-led solutions that center the rights, knowledge, and leadership of those most affected by the plastics-petrochemical industries and the violent systems and structures that uphold their wealth and power. To create a just transition away from the plastic-petrochemical industries and health and environmental harms, we need real solutions from the ground up, with roots in Indigenous Traditional Knowledge. This commitment includes the need for policymakers to support the Polluter Pays Principle and the creation of direct funding for affected communities, which looks different across groups.”
Beard, a retired petrochemical worker, articulates the way forward for an inclusive just transition: “Just transition has to be for all workers. Their lives have to have health. They have to have worth. We have to see that in all the people who work in that chain, not just the waste pickers but also those in the petrochemical sector who work from plastics from the well head to the end user.”
What harms workers, also harms surrounding communities. Focusing on decent work for workers across the full impact-cycle of plastics requires simultaneously focusing on fenceline communities and Indigenous Peoples, centering their experiences, needs, and demands.
Accordingly, policymakers must follow Just Transition and Indigenous Just Transition Principles. As an Indigenous elder, Waghiyi reflected, “An Indigenous just transition requires binding commitments, upstream protections, transparent listing of chemicals and hazard assessments. Indigenous leadership and consent must be included in the text and not slogans in a preamble. The treaty must center Indigenous health and sovereignty or risk erasing generations of knowledge and undermining the Arctic’s ecological integrity.”
The treaty falls far short of these requirements
Reflecting on the INC-5.2 drafting process and what could be ahead, Tormos-Aponte concluded: “Some bad-faith actors may want to renegotiate the UNEA mandate for creating a legally
binding Global Plastics Treaty that addresses supply-side measures, chemicals of concern, and health. That is not acceptable for us.”