The Consensus Syndrome
An effective treaty on plastic pollution will require countries to break the long-standing spell of consensus — and finally put decisions to a vote.
By Magnus Løvold.
For decades, environmental diplomacy has been governed by what the Norwegian political scientist Arild Underdal called ‘the law of the least ambitious programme’: treaties and norms shaped not by the “ayes” of the majority but by the “nays” of the least committed countries. While ecosystems face increasing pressures from human-made pollutants, species loss accelerates at alarming rates, and climate related disasters intensify globally, those responsible for addressing these crises have often seemed more concerned with maintaining political consensus than confronting the urgent and potentially irreversible consequences of environmental collapse.
On 5 August, the final act of the plastics treaty negotiations will resume in Geneva, after the preceding round of talks in Busan failed to conclude and kicked the process into overtime. The key political question facing the nearly one hundred ministers that have registered for the meeting will not be one of substance but of process: whether to push through an ambitious agreement even “if some states are not willing to come to the table”, as a group of ministers put it last week.
If they do, Geneva could represent a turning point towards more effective majority-driven environmental diplomacy. If not, INC-5.2 risks being remembered as yet another summit infiltrated and overrun by petrochemical and fossil fuel interests, and a missed opportunity for the international community to demonstrate meaningful leadership in protecting the planet for future generations.
The voting taboo
After three years of negotiations, bringing the plastics treaty process to a successful conclusion will require leadership, foresight and courage. For reasons that outsiders — and even the occasional insider — may struggle to understand, environmental diplomacy has long treated majority decision-making as a taboo: an unwritten rule that decisions must never go to a vote, even when the rules of procedure explicitly allow it.
In most international law and policy fields — such as those dealing with global health, human rights, disarmament, and international security — majority decision-making is not just accepted, it is routine. The UN General Assembly — the UN’s main policy-making organ and UN Environment Programme’s parent body — regularly adopts resolutions and even treaties on matters as vexed as nuclear weapons and international tax cooperation by majority vote.
By contrast, in the UN Environment Assembly, draft resolutions are routinely emptied of substance or quietly withdrawn if they fail to generate consensus, even though the Assembly’s rules of procedure clearly state that decisions “shall be made […] by a majority of the members present and voting.”
Other arenas of environmental diplomacy have gone even further. The Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has operated without an agreed decision-making rule since its inception three decades ago — a procedural vacuum that has made consensus the only legitimate decision-making mechanism and left the future of humanity hostage to a handful of obstructive, oil-producing countries.
Spoiler’s paradise
Nowhere has the voting taboo been more visible, however, than in the plastics treaty negotiations. In a move that would be familiar to observers of the UNFCCC, a group of plastic-producing nations attempted, during the early round of talks in 2022 and 2023, to hijack the process by removing the majority voting option from the rules of procedures — effectively making consensus be made a legal requirement for all substantive decisions.
After a lengthy and bitterly divisive debate at the second round of talks in Paris, with Saudi Arabia expressing concern about the possible “abuse” of voting rules, Senegal countering that “consensus kills democracy”, and Russia raising innumerable points of order, negotiators opted to kick the can down the road. Noting that there were “differing views” among countries on the rule allowing majority votes on matters of substance, negotiators simply agreed that this “lack of agreement [be] recalled”—whatever that may mean—should anyone invoke the rule.
While Saudi Arabia and a coalition of plastic-producing allies ultimately failed to remove the voting option entirely — the rule allowing for a two-thirds majority vote remains in force — their tactics would leave a lasting mark on the negotiations. The spectacle of procedural fights, accusations of abuse, and manufactured division has, to date, been enough to scare negotiators off from raising the issue again. Since Paris, the mere possibility of voting is now discussed in hushed voices only, as a procedural “you-know-what.”
As a result, the plastics treaty negotiations have so far operated under a de facto consensus rule even though majority voting on substantive matters remains legally available. This turned the process — like the COPs of the UNFCCC — into a plastic-producers’ paradise, where countries objecting most forcefully and most frequently carry the day.
Lowest denominator
The problem with consensus-only decision-making is, fundamentally, that it will always favour the least ambitious players. Majority-based decision-making structures reward cooperation: to win, negotiators must actively reach out to others and build broad alliances. Consensus-only structures, by contrast, do the opposite: safe in the knowledge that they can block any outcome at the end of the day, negotiators with instructions to weaken outcomes or even kill treaties have no incentive to compromise. In a world of consensus, the lowest common denominator rules supreme.
Yet at the fifth round of plastics treaty talks in Busan last December, this dynamic began to shift. Increasingly frustrated by spoiler tactics by Saudi Arabia and other plastic-producing countries, a progressive, rule-making majority signaled its readiness to press ahead without them. Ninety-four countries declared their readiness to “conclude an obligation […] to phase out the most harmful plastic products and chemicals of concern.”
Since Busan, this progressive majority has both sharpened its demands and stepped up their political mobilisation efforts. Through a series of state-led text initiatives, negotiators have specified the legally binding measures they want to see included in the treaty. Meanwhile, nearly one hundred countries issued a “wake-up call” at the June UN Ocean Conference in Nice, warning that a treaty based on voluntary measures or ignoring plastics’ full life cycle would be ineffective.
Breaking the spell
As the fifth and final session of the plastics treaty talks resumes in Geneva next week, the question is whether the progressive majority will muster the confidence needed to deliver on its promises.
The majority exists: WWF’s policy tracker clearly shows a large group of countries aligned around a strong treaty with binding obligations covering the full life cycle of plastics. The rules of procedure, moreover, not only allows, but ultimately requires, decisions to be made by a two-thirds majority vote “as a last resort” if consensus cannot be reached, despite Saudi Arabia’s attempts to challenge its validity.
Adopting treaties by a majority vote is not an exotic loophole, but a standard feature of multilateral lawmaking, anchored in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. It has been used, in the past, to negotiate, conclude and adopt treaties banning nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, cluster munitions, landmines — and other agreements where consensus proved impossible.
Even in traditionally consensus-driven institutions like the International Maritime Organization, countries have recently resorted to voting to push through a landmark greenhouse gas levy on shipping — overcoming entrenched opposition from major polluters, including Saudi Arabia. If negotiators can do so there, why not in Geneva?
In an era when governments with vested interests increasingly sabotage collective action, it is vital to demonstrate that a determined majority can still make international law. This is no longer just about plastic pollution. The credibility of multilateralism itself depends on proving that a small minority cannot indefinitely hold the planet hostage. If the majority is willing to act, Geneva could mark not only the rescue of the plastics treaty, but a turning point for environmental diplomacy itself.
Magnus Løvold is an adviser at Lex International and Project Supervisor at the Norwegian Academy of International Law. He was previously with the International Committee of the Red Cross, Article 36, Norway and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).
