A work of art in Geneva, Switzerland, where discussions on a world plastic treaty took place last week
Fabrice Coffrini / AFP via Getty Images
On August 14, the UN exhausted delegates dropped off in a window -free plenary room, after hours of intensive debate and little sleep, to monitor their hopes for a global treaty to combat plastic pollution of evaporation.
The talks, which take place for two weeks in Geneva, Switzerland, were the second attempt to eliminate an international agreement to stem the wave of this form of pollution.
But at the eleventh hour, they collapsed, the countries divided on the question of whether the treaty should not only contain measures to increase recycling rates, but also to reduce plastic production at source.
Oil producer states – which will be relying more and more on the plastics sector for income as petrol and diesel demand – opposite attempts to curb production.
Everything treated needed unanimous support to pass, and with nations refusing to move from their “red lines”, the talks collapsed.
Does that seem familiar? Tortant negotiations, circular debates and total breakdowns in discussions are not new during environmental heights. Even when the agreements are concluded, often several hours after discussions, they rarely had to say more than evidence – as at the summit of COP28 2023 in Dubai, where nations promised to move away from fossil fuels in the energy system to fight climate change.
A large part of the problem lies in the long -standing requirement of unanimous consensus, explains Robert Falkner to the London School of Economics, a requirement which has obtained negotiations on the United Nations climate and biodiversity since their creation. In practice, this means that hundreds of nations, each with extremely different economic and political circumstances, must agree with any progress.
“The rule of consensus in international environmental negotiations has always been the Achilles heel of the United Nations environmental process,” explains Falkner. “This has often led to results that can only be described as the lowest common denominator.”
Activists and strategists are already tired by a series of dull climatic heights and slow progress in efforts to stop the loss of biodiversity. In the light of the last Geneva crisis, there is growing despair in the face of the diplomatic process for environmental issues.
“Why, on environmental problems, will we consider ourselves only to a multilateralism agreement and to consensus among the 190 countries in 190? It makes no sense, ”explains Simon Sharpe, a former British diplomat and author of Five times faster: rethink science, economics and diplomacy of climate change.
Increasingly, activists and strategists go for a new approach. For Sharpe, who helped organize the summit of the COP26 climate in Glasgow, in the United Kingdom, in 2021, this should include influential countries gathering to accelerate decarbonization on a sectoral basis by sector – by emphasizing action, not on targets. “If you want to make changes, you have to do something,” he says.
Eirik Lindebjerg at the WWF Norway campaign group has roughly the same idea. “If 100 countries agreed on a harmonized measure such as screening for fossil cars, it would always have a massive climate impact even if there were countries that were not part of it,” he said. “There is a strong and substantial argument, in my opinion, for having broken with consensual thought”.
It is an approach inspired by the idea that the world is at the dawn of a series of positive “shift points”, where a boost in the right direction can trigger different elements of the economy – transport, for example, or the energy sector – to quickly decarbonize.
Tim Lenton at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom, author of the future book Positive tilting points: how to repair the climate crisis, should be collaborated between small groups of nations could be a more effective way to accelerate the arrival of positive tilting points than to rely on a multilateral negotiation based on consensus.
“The interest of a tilting point is that a minority can ultimately tip the majority,” he says. “So, it makes no sense of insistent you trying to make everyone get along before anyone before anyone does anything.”
Of course, such an approach depends on having the most influential nations – those who have savings powerful enough to advance a tilting point – on board. With Donald Trump at the head of the United States, it is far from being a guarantee.
Nevertheless, there are signs that this reflection is made in diplomatic circles. In private, the Brazilian hosts of the next COP30 Climate Summit discuss the need for a restructuring of COPs, with a potential role for a new United Nations Climate Change Council which would be able to force decisions under the majority vote and a direct and specific collaboration in the sector between countries. Meanwhile, many circles of cops make a growing commitment of China on climatic issues as a sign that this can take the lead in coordination on certain questions, such as the advancement of renewable energies or electric vehicles.
But if progress on environmental issues must be motivated mainly by smaller national groups, what role remains for the big summits of rescue such as climatic cops? Such events are useful for “the establishment of standards”, explains Sharpe, to help to confer legitimacy to the aspects of the transition already underway, such as the global distance from the power of coal. But we should not expect them to be at the forefront of change, he said.
It is undeniable that, over the decades, environmental summits have been essential to push nations to agree on joint strategies to solve environmental problems. But negotiations based on consensus can only move as quickly as the slowest actor in the room. And too often in recent years, a handful of countries have acted as an effort. The world being confronted with an increasing and intertwined crisis covering the climate, biodiversity and pollution, it may be time to divert them.
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