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Press Conference Co-organized and Facilitated by JTA: Justice-Aligned Groups Demand Just Transition, as Global Plastics Treaty Negotiations Fail Most-Harmed Communities

August 27, 2025December 8, 2025By
Press Conference Co-organized and Facilitated by JTA: Justice-Aligned Groups Demand Just Transition, as Global Plastics Treaty Negotiations Fail Most-Harmed Communities

The following media advisory was issued on August 13, 2025, prior to the UNEP decision that INC-5.2 would not yield a Global Plastics Treaty agreement.

As groups most affected by the injustices and harms from the full impact cycle of plastics, we are raising the alarm. The Global Plastics Treaty negotiations are failing us and our communities! We are convening for a press conference to articulate and amplify a unified call: We demand an inclusive just transition, led by Indigenous Peoples, waste pickers, youth and other frontline workers, and fenceline communities. Our ongoing exclusion and the erasure of our just transition demands at INC-5.2 is unacceptable.

The indispensable Just Transition section (Article 10) of the treaty text is at risk of being eliminated. This article is essential. Without it, there will be no way to ensure that the phasing out of plastics will be guided by just transition principles and practices for Indigenous Peoples, frontline workers, and environmental justice communities. We are tired of having to repeat the same testimonies and concerns, which are ignored and excluded time and again.

Frontline groups have the solutions for how to transition toward flourishing communities free of plastics pollution and poisoning. We must be given space to lead and be provided with direct access to non-debt creating funding to do this vital work. We refuse environmental racism, waste colonialism, and other grave harms. As groups on the frontlines of global plastics pollution and poisoning, we are rising together to say, “Enough!”

Representatives from the Indigenous Environmental Network, the International Alliance of Waste Pickers, the Youth Plastic Action Network, the International Trade Union Confederation, and Port Arthur Community Action Network will share their demands, informed by their lived experiences. The event will be moderated by the Just Transition Alliance’s Lara Aumann.

This press conference provides a crucial intervention to business-as-usual treaty discussions and marks a pivotal space for showing how the negotiations are failing communities and workers on the frontlines. As justice-aligned groups, we will not be silenced and erased. We will accept nothing less than an inclusive just transition!