“Affected Groups Aligned for Justice Raise Their Voices Together” Press Conference on Aug. 8. Photo Credit: Dylan Cava. Recording of press conference on JTA YouTube site.
PRESS RELEASE
Geneva, 7 August 2025 — As negotiations advance at INC-5.2 for a Global Plastics Treaty, frontline groups representing Indigenous Peoples, waste pickers, and unionized workers across the plastics value chain are raising a unified call: A truly effective and just treaty must center the rights, knowledge, and leadership of those most affected by plastic pollution and climate injustice.
Indigenous Peoples: Upholding Rights, Rejecting False Solutions
Indigenous Peoples, who protect 85% of the world’s remaining biodiversity across just 20% of the planet’s land, are not only guardians of ecosystems but are being disproportionately harmed by the overproduction and death cycle of plastics.
The climate and plastic pollution crises are both borne out of an imbalance of power. They depend on the ability of governments and polluting industries to use Indigenous lands, air, waters, ice and bodies as sacrifice zones. This disrupts Indigenous Peoples symbiotic relationship to ecosystems, animal relatives, traditional medicine, water, land, air, and ice. Indigenous Peoples and the ecosystems they are in relationship with are now forcefully both a source and sink for toxic chemicals produced throughout the death cycle of plastics.
“Our bodies, our food, our medicines, our children—we bear the burden of a crisis we did not create,” said Viola Vi Waghiyi, Yupik Mother and Grandmother, Tribal Citizen of the Native Village of Savoonga, and Environmental Health and Justice Director with Alaska Community Action on Toxics.
Plastics and toxic chemicals disrupt the deep, symbiotic relationships Indigenous Peoples maintain with land, water, animals, and the natural world. Microplastics and pollutants now reach even remote Arctic regions, threatening food security, language transmission, and cultural survival.
An Indigenous Just Transition is urgently needed—one that reharmonizes relations with Mother Earth, respects Indigenous cosmovisions, and upholds rights as enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (ILO Convention No. 169).
This transition must:
● Reject commodifying nature through market-based false solutions like plastic credits and
chemical recycling.
● Be rooted in precautionary principles, toxic use reduction, and restorative practices.
● Provide direct access to funding for Indigenous Peoples and affected communities.
The International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Plastics (IIPFP) makes the following four
demands to ensure that the treaty is meaningful, rights-based, and just:
1. Embed the rights of Indigenous Peoples in all aspects ofthe treaty
2. Do not conflate Indigenous Peoples with other stakeholder groups
3. Ensure the full and effective participation of Indigenous Peoples in all stages of the
treaty process
4. Address the full life cycle of plastics—starting from extraction and production
Waste Pickers: Recognizing Invisible Labor, Demanding Just Transition
The International Alliance of Waste Pickers (IAWP), representing more than 40 million waste pickers worldwide, calls for a treaty that recognizes waste pickers essential role and includes Just Transition as a binding obligation.
“We are the ones facing this crisis every day—not from air-conditioned offices, but
from the streets and the dumpsites,” said Soledad Mella, waste picker leader from
Chile and IAWP delegate. “We demand a treaty that recognizes, protects, and
includes us at every step of the process.”
IAWP outlines two core demands, detailed in its position paper and our plastics treaty finance mechanism position:
🔹Just Transition must be a binding component of the treaty—not optional or voluntary.
🔹The financial mechanism must explicitly reference Just Transition and guarantee direct
access to funding for affected communities, not filtered through market-based schemes.
IAWP further advocates for the adoption of:
1. Reuse systems
2. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)
as key strategies to reduce plastic production and pollution at the source.Click here to change this text
Unionized Workers Across the Plastics Value Chain: This Is a Defining Human Rights Moment
The fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC 5.2) represents a critical opportunity to embed labour and human rights protections within the Plastics Treaty. Millions of unionized workers across the plastics lifecycle—particularly in the Global South—remain exposed to dangerous conditions, insecure livelihoods, and exclusion from decision-making.
The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), representing over 200 million unionized workers, insists the treaty must:
● Include binding labor standards for the entire plastics value chain.
● Guarantee safe and decent working conditions, including for women, youth, and waste
pickers.
● Provide social protections and just transition pathways for workers impacted by changes in the plastics economy.
● Ensure meaningful participation through social dialogue.
● Establish a dedicated financing mechanism, with clear industry contributions.
“Our bottom line is clear,” said Repon Chowdhury, ITUC Representative at INC 5.2. “A
just plastics treaty must recognize the rights of all unionized workers—from
production to waste. This is a matter of dignity, justice, and survival.”
Shared Call for Justice: No Inclusion Without Power
Indigenous Peoples, waste pickers, and unionized workers across the plastics value chain are united in their message: False solutions and top-down approaches will only deepen inequality and ecological harm. “The alignment across these groups must not be ignored. If it is, it cannot be called a just transition,” said Fernando Tormos-Aponte.
What is urgently needed is direct support, rights-based frameworks, and a shift in power toward the communities who have long sustained both people and planet—often invisibly.
We are not asking for inclusion—we are demanding it.
The Global Plastics Treaty must not repeat the mistakes of other international
processes. It must be grounded in justice, led by those most impacted, and rooted in real,
community-led solutions.
Media Contact:
📩Nicolás Martínez
International Alliance of Waste Pickers(IAWP)
📧nicolas@wastepickersinternational.org
🌐www.globalrec.org
Media Contact:
📩Catalina de Onís
Just Transition Alliance (JTA)
📧catalina@jtalliance.org
🌐www.jtalliance.org
Media Contact:
📩Cheyenne Rendon
International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Plastics(IIPFP)
📧Cheyenne@societyofnativenations.org
🌐https://sites.google.com/view/iipfp/home