Multilateralism is alive: How global cooperation can help save us from plastic pollution and the climate crisis

Climate change and plastic pollution may look like separate issues. But they are, in fact, two sides of the same crisis: the industry's addiction to fossil fuels.

Fossil fuel emissions account for 89% of the CO2 that drives global warming and 99% of all plastic is made from fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency projects that petrochemicals and plastics will be the single largest driver of growth in world oil demand in the coming decades. By 2030, plastic production alone is projected to consume one in every six barrels of oil.

As the final negotiations for a UN Global Plastics Treaty enter a critical phase in Busan, South Korea, four Greenpeace International activists prevent a tanker at South Korea's Daesan complex from loading toxic petrochemicals destined to be used in plastic production.

The world is in desperate need of a course correction, and this June at the Bonn Climate Change Conference as governments, scientists and NGOs have gathered again to discuss the climate crisis, Greenpeace hosted a side event to aimed at discussing ways to solve these crises together if we are to solve either of them at all.

Greenpeace International, Green Africa Youth Organization and the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the European Union held a side event at the Bonn Climate Change Conference (SB64) 2026 called, Plastics and Climate: Strengthening synergies for a Just Transition.

One addiction, two crises

Climate warming and the plastics crisis have the same root cause: extracting and using fossil fuels, which also leads to producing too much plastic.

The similarities continue with something less discussed: the twin crises actively worsen each other. Plastics emit greenhouse gases throughout their entire lifecycle - from extraction and manufacturing to transport and disposal. In fact, plastics account for more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire aviation sector.

As climate change raises temperatures and intensifies UV radiation, it accelerates the rate at which plastics break down into microplastics - making them more pervasive, more toxic, and harder to recover. Climate change worsens the plastics crisis. The plastics crisis worsens climate change. They are not parallel problems. They are in fact a feedback loop.

As global plastic production has increased dramatically since the mid-20th century, so too have the life cycle emissions of plastics. ©️World Economic Forum

The good news

It's not too late though. Alternatives for the dual crisis are readily available. Our recent report shows how renewable energy capacity has expanded rapidly in the past 10 years since the Paris Agreement was reached - outstripping predictions as the energy landscape underwent tremendous change. Denmark has, for example, powered 88% of its grid with renewable energy in recent years, and Costa Rica powered 98.6% of its electricity from renewable sources in 2025.

Looking towards plastics, we know that implementing reuse systems and other policies to reduce plastic use could virtually eliminate plastic packaging pollution by 2040. Everyday, we see solutions and innovations spring from many parts of the globe, proving that the barriers are not technical, but political.

Thirty years of ignoring the F word

For more than thirty years, the UNFCCC - the world's primary forum, where most of the world governments come together to discuss how to solve climate change - failed to say the most important word relevant to its mandate: fossil fuels. At COP28 in Dubai in 2023, the COP outcome explicitly recognised the primary driver of the problem it exists to resolve.

This is not by accident. A small number of governments and corporate actors with significant fossil fuel interests have consistently used the procedural requirements of consensus-based multilateralism to block that language. t In a consensus-based process the obstructive governments and fossil-fuel interests can run down the clock in every negotiating session without ever having to commit to meaningful action.

The very same governments - and many of the same corporations with lobbyists embedded in their official delegations - are running identical playbooks in Global Plastics Treaty negotiations, preventing the Treaty from addressing the issue at its source and blocking measures to cut production and use. Same players, same moves, same outcomes - unless we choose differently.

We still have a chance, but it's fleeting.

For both the UNFCCC and the Global Plastics Treaty, the imperative is the same: stop managing the symptoms and address the systems that produce them.

For climate change, this means a just transition away from fossil fuels that is fast, fair, and funded, with governments advancing global co-operation and delivering credible national roadmaps to get there.

For the Global Plastics Treaty, it means addressing the full lifecycle of plastics, beginning upstream by cutting plastic production.

What can the Plastics Treaty learn from the UNFCCC?

The Paris Agreement's architecture - voluntary, nationally-determined commitments, no binding limits on fossil fuel production - has repeatedly been weaponised by some governments against meaningful action and made the 1.5℃ limit harder to reach.

While the Paris Agreement has helped to accelerate the clean energy transition, lower projected global greenhouse gas emissions and reduced the projected temperature increase, there is still a large 1.5°C ambition gap that needs to be closed. Simply put, more needs to be done.

The Global Plastics Treaty must not be a repeat of the delays we've seen in climate action. It needs global, legally binding measures to reduce plastic production from the outset, coupled with investment in reuse systems, product redesign, and improved waste management, with no country left behind in that transition. A treaty focused exclusively on waste management - the end of the pipe, not the tap - will perpetuate the problem it is meant to fix. Neither crisis affords that kind of time.

Consensus Kills

Civil society organizations, waste pickers, frontline communities, Indigenous Peoples, scientists, healthcare professionals, children and youth, women, businesses, and non-governmental organisations did a silent protest and held messages demanding negotiators to keep their promise, fix the process and end plastic pollution as delegates enter the plenary session of the Global Plastics Treaty negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland.

While no country should be left behind, and while consensus can play an important role in building broad-based support, we cannot continue to allow a small number of blocking states to hold back the will of the majority and the mandate of the people. We hear whispers that multilateralism is dead. But multilateralism is alive. It is being stymied by a small number of blocking states in both the UNFCCC and the Plastics Treaty negotiations.

Multilateralism is an essential condition for human survival and to solve the world's biggest crises - it needs to be protected from the interests that have learned to use its architecture as a delay mechanism. This must be done by holding up the science clearly enough that no government can look at it and pretend they don't know what it says.

The science on plastics is not waiting to be discovered. The damage is visible: microplastics have been found in our blood, breast milk, and even in the food our babies eat. The evidence linking plastic exposure to endocrine disruption, fertility impacts, and cancer risk is growing. What is missing is the political will to let the evidence speak louder than those profiting from inaction.

New research commissioned by Greenpeace International has found microplastics in baby food sold in plastic pouches by two of the world's largest food companies, Nestlé and Danone, raising urgent concerns about the safety of products marketed for infants.

The first conference on the Transition away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta revealed that countries are no longer willing to wait. Fifty-seven countries - representing a third of the world's economy - broke free from the consensus chokehold of the UNFCCC and held a conversation not only brave enough to say "fossil fuels" but centred entirely around them.

The Plastics Treaty still has a chance, and in March 2027, countries will come together again to attempt to finalise the agreement. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity that we must not miss. Governments must be bold and brave in their solutions.

Are countries ready to connect the dots and act?

Jacob Kean Hammerson is the Global Plastics Policy Lead at Greenpeace USA.