06 Jun 2023 --- The UN’s second round of International Negotiating Committee (INC-2) meetings for a global plastics pollution treaty ended in frustration last week after half of the five-day event was spent re-debating procedural rules, such as the treaty’s voting procedure. While the deadlock was eventually broken, environmentalists accuse some industry-backed governments of conspiring to delay the treaty and diminish its powers. Plastic pollution was not discussed until the third day, and despite overcoming the impasse on voting mechanisms – a question of whether or not each of the 170 nations involved in the negotiations would have some form of veto power – international divisions on the treaty’s stipulations remain, and the procedural rules are still not clearly defined.
