The Day Consensus Slipped Away: Lessons from INC-5.2 Geneva

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Even as I tapped ash into the tray, I knew Eny’s sentiment was one of many. Whether a consensus was to be reached on this day remained to be seen.

I looked at my cards and smiled, took a drought, blew, and played my hand.

“For what is a man, what has he got? If not himself, then he has naught,” he began singing, belting out the words in conviction.

“To say the things he truly feels, and not the words of one who kneels,” Jus joined in the song, while playing his hand, obviously in agreement with Eny.

“The record shows I took the blows, and did it my way, yes, it was my way,” they sang, beating their chests.

Would they manage to convince the group into having greenkits for our seven-aside Sunday football team, I wondered, crushing the stub on the tray.

And had the negotiators had this enthusiasm and love for theater, could there have been a consensus to write home about? I wondered some more, sipping water from a plastic bottle.

“If we can’t be bold here, where else can it happen,” one delegate had asked, during the 2nd Part of the 5th Session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to Develop an International Legally Binding Instrument on Plastic Pollution, including in the Marine Environment (INC-5.2), in Geneva, which had to be adjourned without consensus following 10 days of negotiations.

This comes after talks were adjourned during INC 5.1, which took place in November/December 2024 in Busan, Republic of Korea, seeing more than 2,600 participants gather at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, including over 1,400 Member delegates from 183 countries, and close to 1,000 Observers representing over 400 organizations. Some 70 Ministers and Vice Ministers, as well as 30 other high-level representatives, also held informal roundtables on the margins of the session.

Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), described it as hard fought ten days against the backdrop of geopolitical complexities, economic challenges, and multilateral strains.

“While we did not land the treaty text we hoped for, we at UNEP will continue the work against plastic pollution, pollution that is in our groundwater, in our soil, in our rivers, in our oceans, and yes, in our bodies,” she said.

Numerous toxic chemical additives are included in the manufacture of plastic products, the material used in the manufacture of products that drive everyday life, I mused, looking at my water bottle, including the wide-ranging class of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), best known as forever chemicals, which have been documented to be carcinogenic to humans.

During the negotiations, the major sticking points were capping plastic production, managing harmful products and chemicals, and establishing adequate financial support from developed to developing nations.

Failing to reach an agreement, French ecology minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher told the meeting’s closing session that she was “enraged because despite genuine efforts by many, and real progress in discussions, no tangible results have been obtained.”

In an apparent reference to oil-producing nations, Colombia’s delegate Haendel Rodriguez had said a deal had been “blocked by a small number of states who simply did not want an agreement.”

“Failing to reach the goal we set for ourselves may bring sadness, even frustration. Yet it should not lead to discouragement. On the contrary, it should spur us to regain our energy, renew our commitments, and unite our aspirations,” said INC Chair Ambassador Luis Vayas Valdivieso.

“It has not happened yet in Geneva, but I have no doubt that the day will come when the international community will unite its will and join hands to protect our environment and safeguard the health of our people,” the chair had added.

I looked around the table at card players arguing over the kit color to replace our worn-out kits, and wondered whether this would be the day we’d be settling on a color or postponing it to the next card night.

And like our kits, the world will have to wait another round before a consensus is stitched together.