Overview

• Negotiations have stalled with only four working days left before August 14 as delegates struggle to find consensus on a legally binding plastic pollution treaty.
• The draft text has swelled from 22 to 35 pages and ballooned to nearly 1,500 brackets, underscoring deep disagreements over key provisions.
• Kuwait’s Like-Minded Group of oil-producing nations rejects upstream production caps and insists the treaty focus on downstream waste management.
• Panama’s Juan Monterrey Gomez warned that microplastics permeate human bodies and ecosystems and argued that recycling alone cannot solve the crisis.
• Some delegations are proposing cutting contentious sections to salvage an agreement while protesters outside the UN demand stronger full lifecycle controls.