Greenpeace protest at the recent Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC 5.2) on plastic pollution held in Geneva. Credit: Ravleen Kaur/IPS
By Ravleen Kaur
GENEVA, Aug 21 2025 – On August 7, a tar-like slurry glistened on the roads leading up to the gate of the Palais Des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. For fear of sticky substances sticking to tires, no vehicles were allowed to go inside for a while, forcing officials arriving from different parts of the world to disembark and walk through a side entrance.
Four people swiftly climbed the gates of the Palais, where the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC 5.2) on plastic pollution was taking place in Geneva, with yellow fluorescent banners that read “Big Oil polluting inside” and “Plastic treaty not for sale.” The demonstration couldn’t continue for long, as the police asked them to leave. But they lasted long enough to make a point.
Twenty-two activists from Greenpeace, an environmental non-profit, had organized the act two days after the global plastic treaty talks began in Geneva.
“The fake oil spill was to call out the undue influence of the fossil fuel industry on the plastic treaty talks,” said Graham Forbes, head of the Greenpeace delegation to the treaty negotiation.
The 10-day-long talks saw participation from over 3,700 delegates from 184 countries but eventually failed to deliver a treaty.
The same afternoon, an analysis of the provisional list of participants revealed that at least 234 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists had registered for the INC 5.2 talks. The Geneva meeting was the second part of the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), which is tasked with preparing an “international legally binding instrument” to end plastic pollution across its lifecycle—its extraction and production, product design and use, and final disposal. The meeting concluded without an agreement due to disagreements over crucial aspects of the treaty regarding the extent of future restrictions on plastic production and the financial mechanisms for developing countries.
“In INC-3 we counted 143, in INC-4 it was 196 and in INC-5 it was 220 lobbyists from the petrochemical and fossil fuel industry. So this year is the highest, even though our estimate is conservative because our methodology relies on delegates who choose to self-disclose their connections to fossil fuel or chemical industry interests,” said Delphine Levi Alvares, Global Petrochemicals Campaign Manager at the Centre for International Environmental Law (CIEL).
Plastic is a petroleum product; 99 percent of it is made from fossil fuels, and only 1 percent comes from biological sources. Experts cite that as fossil fuel-based industries face pressure in the climate change negotiations to change track and move to renewable sources of energy, plastic is quickly emerging as plan B to secure their business interests.
“What we are seeing here at INC5.2 is not new. It’s part of a pattern that is quickly becoming a crisis of credibility, where fossil capture has become systemic, strategic, and recurring across the climate change Conference of Parties (COPs), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),” said Dylan Kawa, Strategic Engagement and Communications Lead at the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network, Fiji.
Numbers Game
The CIEL analysis found that people from major petroleum and chemical companies—Dow, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, the American Chemistry Council and All India Plastic Manufacturers Association—were well represented among these lobbyists, outnumbering the combined diplomatic delegation of all 27 European Union nations.
The national delegations of Egypt, Kazakhstan, China, Iran, Chile and the Dominican Republic had 19 lobbyists accompanying them. The industry lobbyists were nearly four times the number of participants from the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastic Treaty (60) and about seven times the number of people representing indigenous communities (36) whom plastic pollution impacts greatly.
The situation is similar to climate COPs. At COP27, held in Egypt in 2022, 636 oil and fossil fuel lobbyists participated, found an analysis by Global Witness, an investigative agency looking at climate talks. This was a 25 percent increase in number from the previous COP held in Glasgow, Scotland.
“Oil and gas representatives outnumbered the entire African and Indigenous delegations at COP27,” said Kawa.
COP28 in Dubai broke the record with about 2,500 lobbyists attending the meeting, while there were only about 1,500 delegates from the ten most climate-vulnerable nations and only 316 from the impacted indigenous communities. At the last COP in Baku, however, the number went down to 1,773, though it was still more than the combined delegation of the ten most vulnerable countries, showed an analysis by the ‘Kick Big Polluters Out Coalition.’
Already there is speculation that COP30 in Brazil is being compromised. The COP30 Presidency recently announced the engagement of PR firm Edelman to manage its media strategy. Edelman also represents Shell, the second-largest investor-owned oil company in the world.
“Decades of evidence show the fossil fuel and chemical industries’ playbook: deny, distract, derail. After decades of obstruction in the climate negotiations, why would anyone think that they would suddenly show up in good faith in the Plastics Treaty talks?” says Ximena Banegas, CIEL’s Global Plastics and Petrochemicals Campaigner.
Petro lobby vs. indigenous communities
Indigenous communities felt that they were not heard in these talks thanks to the derailing tactics used by countries that have vested interests.
“As indigenous people, we are not only outnumbered by lobbyists. We see the same oppression in this space that we see in the outside world. The UN structure was created for us to align and find a convergence but the power dynamics are replicated here too. We have the numbers and the science on our side and we are also seeing the burden of this crisis (plastic pollution) in our territories, in our lives and in our bodies, but still we are not being heard well. The treaty must center people, not polluters,” said Xananine Calvillo, an indigenous leader from Mexico.
The INC’s mandate was to deliver a treaty by the end of 2024. But even after six sessions and at least USD 40 million spent by the United Nations Environment Programme on them, disagreement persisted between countries. At INC 5.2, while more than 120 countries pushed for proposals on production caps, phasing out single-use plastic and toxic chemicals in it, the health impact of plastic pollution and decision by majority voting, a handful of oil and petrochemical economies like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, USA and India stood against them. They insist that plastic pollution is only a waste management issue and should be dealt with by better recycling rather than restricting production.
Dr. Vishvaja Sambath from the Centre for Financial Accountability, a non-profit that is part of the Break Free From Plastic movement, disagreed.
“Communities are suffering from the emissions of the petroleum and petrochemical industries, which supply plastics’ raw materials. Yet, at these negotiations, major oil-producing nations appear indifferent to both people and the planet. Their priority remains profit. This is an insult to frontline communities who are battling cancer, respiratory diseases and other severe health impacts.”
IPS UN Bureau Report
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