Member states of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) have elected a Chilean diplomat and environmental minister as the new chair for the global plastics treaty negotiations, during a brief session in Geneva, Switzerland.
The new chair, Julio Cordano, is director of environment, climate change and oceans at the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “Plastic pollution is a planetary problem that affects every country, community and individual,” Cordano said. “Therefore, a treaty is urgently needed to support concerted action and bring us together to address this shared responsibility. I am willing and determined to play a leading role in helping the Committee cross the finish line.”
The committee also elected Linroy Christian of Antigua and Barbuda as vice chair, during the third part of the fifth INC session, which was intended only to elect officers and not to host substantive discussions.
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) launched the INC process in March 2022, with a goal of completing an international legally binding treaty to address plastics pollution.
Last August, the treaty talks collapsed after several contentious sessions, and Ecuadoran ambassador Luis Vayas Valdivieso resigned as chair in November. Among the key issues during the embattled negotiations are proposed limits to virgin plastics production. US stakeholders including the federal government have changed position several times, and America’s Plastic Makers and the Trump administration currently oppose such caps.
However, in summer 2025 scientists from several global research universities wrote a paper “demonstrating the need for the treaty text to include mandatory plastic production cuts as an essential strategy to meaningfully reduce the existential threat of plastic pollution, the agreed mandate of the treaty negotiations.”
And this year, German researchers said a treaty was still within reach, and provided several recommendations.
