Talks over a global UN pact to tackle plastic pollution will restart at a later date after bitter divisions stopped governments reaching an agreement at what was due to be the final round of negotiations in the South Korean city of Busan.
Despite proceedings going into overtime in the early hours of Monday, diplomats failed to break a stalemate over core issues under consideration for the treaty, including reductions in plastic production.
More than 100 developed and developing countries strongly pushed for measures to cap plastic manufacturing, but a handful of oil and gas-producing states – vocally led by Saudi Arabia, Russia, Kuwait and Iran – stonewalled their efforts, arguing the pact should only address consumption and recycling.
Negotiators failed to find common ground during the week-long discussions – and following numerous missed deadlines, the chair of the talks, Luis Vayas Valdivieso, released a new draft treaty text mid-afternoon on Sunday, the final day. But the document was littered with opposing options and hundreds of brackets around all contentious issues.
It looked unlikely to chart a path to an agreement in the handful of hours left on the schedule.
Production curbs needed for strong global pact on plastic pollution, campaigners say
Ultimately, countries decided to buy more time and suspend the session with a view to resume it – likely at some point next year.
“We have made significant progress in Busan – however, our work is far from complete,” said a bleary-eyed Vayas Valdivieso as he opened the closing plenary.
“Unresolved issues remain challenging and additional time will be needed to address them effectively. There is a general agreement to resume the current session at a later date to conclude our negotiations,” he added.
Interventions from country delegations laid bare, once again, the deep divisions standing in the way of an accord.
Applause for high ambition
Members of the so-called High Ambition Coalition (HAC) seized the opportunity to put on a public display of the widespread support for their treaty proposals, including the inclusion of a “global target” to reduce plastic production to “sustainable levels”.
Juliet Kabera from Rwanda, co-chair of the HAC, said the 85 countries in the coalition voiced their “strong concerns about ongoing calls by a small minority group of countries to remove binding provisions from the text that are indispensable for the treaty to be effective”.
After listing those key elements, she concluded by asking everyone who backed the statement to “stand for ambition”. The overwhelming majority of delegates present in the room rose to their feet and broke into a long round of applause punctuated by loud cheers.
After Rwanda’s statement called on all those supporting an ambitious treaty to stand, the plenary erupted in support at INC-5 in Busan, South Korea, December 1, 2024. (Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth)
Moments later, Camila Zepeda of Mexico began her intervention by reading out the names of the nearly 100 countries behind a ‘legally-binding” provision to “phase out” the most harmful plastic products and chemicals of concern used in their production.
Both Kabera’s and Zepeda’s statements were supported by many developing countries across Africa, Latin America and the Pacific and nearly all rich nations, with the notable exception of the United States.
Speaking for the European Union, Hugo Schally said the bloc was “disappointed” with the talks’ outcome, but felt “encouraged and empowered by a growing number of countries sharing the same ambitions”.
Saudis: Problem is pollution not plastic
Countries opposed to manufacturing curbs hit back. Saudi Arabia’s Abdulrahman Al Gwaiz complained about certain provisions, including production caps, that “continue to make it despite our continued insistence that they are not within the scope”.
“If you address plastic pollution, there should be no problem with producing plastic. The problem is the pollution, not the plastic,” he added.
Russia’s delegate spoke of “production regulation models” being imposed “purely for economic reasons”.
India’s negotiator said “we cannot deny the importance plastic plays in the development of society”, adding that the treaty needs to strike a “critical balance”.
Nearly all plastic is derived from fossil fuels – and many countries and companies see the petrochemicals sector as a lifeline, with demand for oil and gas in the energy sector projected to decline as the world shifts to cleaner sources.
Plastic production has been rising at an unrelenting pace over the last few decades and, according to some projections, could double or triple by 2050. A surge in production is expected to have a significant impact on the greenhouse gas emissions exacerbating the climate crisis.
Plastic production could consume around a quarter of the carbon budget remaining if global warming is to be limited to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, according to a study by the US-based Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Industry “capture”
Christina Dixon, ocean campaign lead at the Environmental Investigation Agency, said the negotiations had been “captured by plastic and petrochemical industries and their aligned countries, who have no intention to address plastic pollution or let others do so”.
But she added that the high-ambition coalition would “continue to fight in solidarity with those seeking real solutions to end the harms of plastic pollution”.
Graham Forbes, Greenpeace’s head of delegation in Busan, said “this delay comes with dire consequences” for the frontline communities affected by the plastic pollution crisis. “The ambitious majority must break through fossil fuel influence and the obstruction of a few to deliver an effective agreement,” he added.
Some negotiators and observers told Climate Home that China would need to play a decisive role in bridging the divide with the petrostates, if the world is to stand a chance of clinching an ambitious deal. Beijing gave a nod in that direction during the closing plenary.
Vice Minister Guo Fang said all countries should “propose more pragmatic and balanced solutions” that address the “entire life-cycle” of plastics, while taking into account national differences.
(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; editing by Megan Rowling)
The post Talks to produce global plastics pact end without agreement appeared first on Climate Home News.
Climate Change
Cheniere Energy Received $370 Million IRS Windfall for Using LNG as ‘Alternative’ Fuel
The country’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas benefited from what critics say is a questionable IRS interpretation of tax credits.
Cheniere Energy, the largest producer and exporter of U.S. liquefied natural gas, received $370 million from the IRS in the first quarter of 2026, a payout that shipping experts, tax specialists and a U.S. senator say the company never should have received.
Cheniere Energy Received $370 Million IRS Windfall for Using LNG as ‘Alternative’ Fuel
Climate Change
DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’?
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Absolute State of the Union
‘DRILL, BABY’: US president Donald Trump “doubled down on his ‘drill, baby, drill’ agenda” in his State of the Union (SOTU) address, said the Los Angeles Times. He “tout[ed] his support of the fossil-fuel industry and renew[ed] his focus on electricity affordability”, reported the Financial Times. Trump also attacked the “green new scam”, noted Carbon Brief’s SOTU tracker.
COAL REPRIEVE: Earlier in the week, the Trump administration had watered down limits on mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants, reported the Financial Times. It remains “unclear” if this will be enough to prevent the decline of coal power, said Bloomberg, in the face of lower-cost gas and renewables. Reuters noted that US coal plants are “ageing”.
OIL STAY: The US Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments brought by the oil industry in a “major lawsuit”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper said the firms are attempting to head off dozens of other lawsuits at state level, relating to their role in global warming.
SHIP-SHILLING: The Trump administration is working to “kill” a global carbon levy on shipping “permanently”, reported Politico, after succeeding in delaying the measure late last year. The Guardian said US “bullying” could be “paying off”, after Panama signalled it was reversing its support for the levy in a proposal submitted to the UN shipping body.
Around the world
- RARE EARTHS: The governments of Brazil and India signed a deal on rare earths, said the Times of India, as well as agreeing to collaborate on renewable energy.
- HEAT ROLLBACK: German homes will be allowed to continue installing gas and oil heating, under watered-down government plans covered by Clean Energy Wire.
- BRAZIL FLOODS: At least 53 people died in floods in the state of Minas Gerais, after some areas saw 170mm of rain in a few hours, reported CNN Brasil.
- ITALY’S ATTACK: Italy is calling for the EU to “suspend” its emissions trading system (ETS) ahead of a review later this year, said Politico.
- COOKSTOVE CREDITS: The first-ever carbon credits under the Paris Agreement have been issued to a cookstove project in Myanmar, said Climate Home News.
- SAUDI SOLAR: Turkey has signed a “major” solar deal that will see Saudi firm ACWA building 2 gigawatts in the country, according to Agence France-Presse.
$467 billion
The profits made by five major oil firms since prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago, according to a report by Global Witness covered by BusinessGreen.
Latest climate research
- Claims about the “fingerprint” of human-caused climate change, made in a recent US Department of Energy report, are “factually incorrect” | AGU Advances
- Large lakes in the Congo Basin are releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from “immense ancient stores” | Nature Geoscience
- Shared Socioeconomic Pathways – scenarios used regularly in climate modelling – underrepresent “narratives explicitly centring on democratic principles such as participation, accountability and justice” | npj Climate Action
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The constituency of Richard Tice MP, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of Reform UK, is the second-largest recipient of flood defence spending in England, according to new Carbon Brief analysis. Overall, the funding is disproportionately targeted at coastal and urban areas, many of which have Conservative or Liberal Democrat MPs.
Spotlight
Is there really a UK ‘greenlash’?
This week, after a historic Green Party byelection win, Carbon Brief looks at whether there really is a “greenlash” against climate policy in the UK.
Over the past year, the UK’s political consensus on climate change has been shattered.
Yet despite a sharp turn against climate action among right-wing politicians and right-leaning media outlets, UK public support for climate action remains strong.
Prof Federica Genovese, who studies climate politics at the University of Oxford, told Carbon Brief:
“The current ‘war’ on green policy is mostly driven by media and political elites, not by the public.”
Indeed, there is still a greater than two-to-one majority among the UK public in favour of the country’s legally binding target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as shown below.
Steve Akehurst, director of public-opinion research initiative Persuasion UK, also noted the growing divide between the public and “elites”. He told Carbon Brief:
“The biggest movement is, without doubt, in media and elite opinion. There is a bit more polarisation and opposition [to climate action] among voters, but it’s typically no more than 20-25% and mostly confined within core Reform voters.”
Conservative gear shift
For decades, the UK had enjoyed strong, cross-party political support for climate action.
Lord Deben, the Conservative peer and former chair of the Climate Change Committee, told Carbon Brief that the UK’s landmark 2008 Climate Change Act had been born of this cross-party consensus, saying “all parties supported it”.
Since their landslide loss at the 2024 election, however, the Conservatives have turned against the UK’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050, which they legislated for in 2019.
Curiously, while opposition to net-zero has surged among Conservative MPs, there is majority support for the target among those that plan to vote for the party, as shown below.
Dr Adam Corner, advisor to the Climate Barometer initiative that tracks public opinion on climate change, told Carbon Brief that those who currently plan to vote Reform are the only segment who “tend to be more opposed to net-zero goals”. He said:
“Despite the rise in hostile media coverage and the collapse of the political consensus, we find that public support for the net-zero by 2050 target is plateauing – not plummeting.”
Reform, which rejects the scientific evidence on global warming and campaigns against net-zero, has been leading the polls for a year. (However, it was comfortably beaten by the Greens in yesterday’s Gorton and Denton byelection.)
Corner acknowledged that “some of the anti-net zero noise…[is] showing up in our data”, adding:
“We see rising concerns about the near-term costs of policies and an uptick in people [falsely] attributing high energy bills to climate initiatives.”
But Akehurst said that, rather than a big fall in public support, there had been a drop in the “salience” of climate action:
“So many other issues [are] competing for their attention.”
UK newspapers published more editorials opposing climate action than supporting it for the first time on record in 2025, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Global ‘greenlash’?
All of this sits against a challenging global backdrop, in which US president Donald Trump has been repeating climate-sceptic talking points and rolling back related policy.
At the same time, prominent figures have been calling for a change in climate strategy, sold variously as a “reset”, a “pivot”, as “realism”, or as “pragmatism”.
Genovese said that “far-right leaders have succeeded in the past 10 years in capturing net-zero as a poster child of things they are ‘fighting against’”.
She added that “much of this is fodder for conservative media and this whole ecosystem is essentially driving what we call the ‘greenlash’”.
Corner said the “disconnect” between elite views and the wider public “can create problems” – for example, “MPs consistently underestimate support for renewables”. He added:
“There is clearly a risk that the public starts to disengage too, if not enough positive voices are countering the negative ones.”
Watch, read, listen
TRUMP’S ‘PETROSTATE’: The US is becoming a “petrostate” that will be “sicker and poorer”, wrote Financial Times associate editor Rana Forohaar.
RHETORIC VS REALITY: Despite a “political mood [that] has darkened”, there is “more green stuff being installed than ever”, said New York Times columnist David Wallace-Wells.
CHINA’S ‘REVOLUTION’: The BBC’s Climate Question podcast reported from China on the “green energy revolution” taking place in the country.
Coming up
- 2-6 March: UN Food and Agriculture Organization regional conference for Latin America and Caribbean, Brasília
- 3 March: UK spring statement
- 4-11 March: China’s “two sessions”
- 5 March: Nepal elections
Pick of the jobs
- The Guardian, senior reporter, climate justice | Salary: $123,000-$135,000. Location: New York or Washington DC
- China-Global South Project, non-resident fellow, climate change | Salary: Up to $1,000 a month. Location: Remote
- University of East Anglia, PhD in mobilising community-based climate action through co-designed sports and wellbeing interventions | Salary: Stipend (unknown amount). Location: Norwich, UK
- TABLE and the University of São Paulo, Brazil, postdoctoral researcher in food system narratives | Salary: Unknown. Location: Pirassununga, Brazil
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 27 February 2026: Trump’s fossil-fuel talk | Modi-Lula rare-earth pact | Is there a UK ‘greenlash’? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Seven Pacific island nations say they will demand heftier levies on global shipping emissions if opponents of a green deal for the industry succeed in reopening negotiations on the stalled accord.
The United States and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to grant final approval to the International Maritime Organization’s Net-Zero Framework (NZF) in October and they are now leading a drive for changes to the deal.
In a joint submission seen by Climate Home News, the seven climate-vulnerable Pacific countries said the framework was already a “fragile compromise”, and vowed to push for a universal levy on all ship emissions, as well as higher fees . The deal currently stipulates that fees will be charged when a vessel’s emissions exceed a certain level.
“For many countries, the NZF represents the absolute limit of what they can accept,” said the unpublished submission by Fiji, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands.
The countries said a universal levy and higher charges on shipping would raise more funds to enable a “just and equitable transition leaving no country behind”. They added, however, that “despite its many shortcomings”, the framework should be adopted later this year.
US allies want exemption for ‘transition fuels’
The previous attempt to adopt the framework failed after governments narrowly voted to postpone it by a year. Ahead of the vote, the US threatened governments and their officials with sanctions, tariffs and visa restrictions – and President Donald Trump called the framework a “Green New Scam Tax on Shipping”.
Since then, Liberia – an African nation with a major low-tax shipping registry headquartered in the US state of Virginia – has proposed a new measure under which, rather than staying fixed under the NZF, ships’ emissions intensity targets change depending on “demonstrated uptake” of both “low-carbon and zero-carbon fuels”.
The proposal places stringent conditions on what fuels are taken into consideration when setting these targets, stressing that the low- and zero-carbon fuels should be “scalable”, not cost more than 15% more than standard marine fuels and should be available at “sufficient ports worldwide”.
This proposal would not “penalise transitional fuels” like natural gas and biofuels, they said. In the last decade, the US has built a host of large liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals, which the Trump administration is lobbying other countries to purchase from.
The draft motion, seen by Climate Home News, was co-sponsored by US ally Argentina and also by Panama, a shipping hub whose canal the US has threatened to annex. Both countries voted with the US to postpone the last vote on adopting the framework.
-
IMO head: Shipping decarbonisation “has started” despite green deal delay
Arsenio Dominguez said the shipping industry’s net zero emissions goal is not in dispute although countries have stalled on adopting a framework to reach it -
US-led alliance wins a year’s delay in adoption of green shipping deal
The IMO’s Net-Zero Framework will be up for approval again in October 2026, after the US and Saudi Arabia persuaded countries not to vote on it as planned
The IMO’s Panamanian head Arsenio Dominguez told reporters in January that changes to the framework were now possible.
“It is clear from what happened last year that we need to look into the concerns that have been expressed [and] … make sure that they are somehow addressed within the framework,” he said.
Patchwork of levies
While the European Union pushed firmly for the framework’s adoption, two of its shipping-reliant member states – Greece and Cyprus – abstained in October’s vote.
After a meeting between the Greek shipping minister and Saudi Arabia’s energy minister in January, Greece said a “common position” united Greece, Saudi Arabia and the US on the framework.
If the NZF or a similar instrument is not adopted, the IMO has warned that there will be a patchwork of differing regional levies on pollution – like the EU’s emissions trading system for ships visiting its ports – which will be complicated and expensive to comply with.
This would mean that only countries with their own levies and with lots of ships visiting their ports would raise funds, making it harder for other nations to fund green investments in their ports, seafarers and shipping companies. In contrast, under the NZF, revenues would be disbursed by the IMO to all nations based on set criteria.
Anais Rios, shipping policy officer from green campaign group Seas At Risk, told Climate Home News the proposal by the Pacific nations for a levy on all shipping emissions – not just those above a certain threshold – was “the most credible way to meet the IMO’s climate goals”.
“With geopolitics reframing climate policy, asking the IMO to reopen the discussion on the universal levy is the only way to decarbonise shipping whilst bringing revenue to manage impacts fairly,” Rios said.
“It is […] far stronger than the Net-Zero Framework that is currently on offer.”
The post Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen appeared first on Climate Home News.
Pacific nations want higher emissions charges if shipping talks reopen
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