Abstract The second part of the fifth session of the UN’s Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5.2) on plastic pollution was held at the Palais des Nations in Geneva from 5 to 15 August 2025. Despite a sense of urgency, 2,600 participants, including delegations from 183 countries and hundreds of observers, negotiators left Geneva without consensus on a final agreement. Delegates decided to put the negotiations on pause, demonstrating a continued commitment but deep divergences in opinions over core aspects of the agreement, such as scope and ambition, inclusion of additives, production controls, and financing mechanisms. Drawing on our ethnographic participant observation methodology and analysis of official documents, this paper outlines the negotiation dynamics and assesses how the emerging treaty text developed over the negotiation session at INC-5.2, and if no treaty is to come from this process, what alternatives there may be outside the formal negotiation process.
Cowan et al. (Mon,) studied this question.