PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Pollution
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1677615
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in Marine Environmental Protection: Challenges, Solutions and Perspectives Volume IIView all 34 articles
The Plastics Treaty: Steps Forward, Agreement Deferred
Provisionally accepted
- Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China
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The United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) and the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) have been working on an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment (Plastics Treaty) since the historic resolution was adopted in 2022. This piece presents a perspective on the current progress of the Plastics Treaty from the first session of the UNEA to the last session of the INC as of August 2025, highlighting different positions of States and groups of States, based on which, argues that some of the key contentions remain throughout the negotiations.
Keywords: UNEA, UNEP, future trajectory, Funding mechanism, Scope of the Treaty
Received: 01 Aug 2025; Accepted: 25 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Guo and Hu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jianping Guo, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China
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