Global Plastics Treaty: Initial Considerations for INC-1

In March 2022, the United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) adopted resolution 5/14 titled “End Plastic Pollution: Towards an International Legally Binding Instrument.”

The resolution convenes an intergovernmental negotiating committee (INC) to develop a new global agreement combatting plastic pollution, otherwise referred to as the global plastics treaty (GPT), with its first meeting (INC-1) set in Uruguay from 28 November to 2 December 2022 to kick off negotiations. The aim is to reach agreement by the end of 2024 with four additional rounds of negotiations, ideally with significant intersessional work, and to open the agreement for adoption in 2025.

In this briefing we provide some key considerations for negotiators going into INC-1 (previous briefing in this series can be found here).