Page 55 - Plastics News Issue October 2025

INTERNATIONAL NEWS
RED LINE CLARITY
UNEP has been shepherding the talks process,
which began in 2022.
Summarising where countries are at, Andersen
said: "The mood music is: 'we're still in the nego-
tiations. We are not walking away. We have our
red lines, but we have a better understanding of
the others' red lines. And we still want this'."
Andersen said Norway and Kenya convened a
well-attended meeting at the UN General As-
sembly in New York last month.
The COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November
will provide another opportunity to put the feel-
ers out, ahead of the UN Environment Assembly
in Nairobi in December.
October 2025
Luis Vayas Valdivieso, Ecuador's ambassador
to Britain who chaired the last three of six ne-
gotiation rounds, has announced he is stepping
down, leaving the process rudderless.
'SERIOUS ALLEGATION'
Vayas's Geneva draft treaty text was instantly
ripped apart by countries in brutal fashion, and
while a revised effort gained some traction, the
clock ran out.
British newspaper The Guardian reported that
staff from Andersen's UNEP team held a cov-
ert meeting on the last night in Geneva, aimed
at coaxing members of civil society groups into
pressuring Vayas to quit.
"This is a very, very serious allegation," Anders-
en said. "I did not know and obviously had not
asked anyone to do something of this sort."
She said the allegation had been referred to the
UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services.
"I've been in this business for 40 years, and I
have never, ever done such a thing, and I would
never have asked a staff of mine, or anyone else
for that matter, to go and have covert meetings
and quote my name and ask to undo a seated
chair who is elected by member states. It's out-
rageous."
As for whether a new chair could provide fresh
momentum, she said: "As always, when there's
change, there is a degree of a different mood.
Source - indiatoday.in
PLASTICS NEWS 55