GENEVA, October 7, 2025 — Following The Guardian story that announced that Ambassador Luis Vayas Valdivieso, chair of the intergovernmental negotiating committee to advance a plastics treaty (INC), is stepping down from his position, Andres del Castillo, Senior Attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, issued the following reaction:
“We welcome Chair Luis Vayas’ decision to step down. Despite Vayas’ personal and professional commitment, the plastics treaty negotiations have been suffering from a failure of process for quite some time. A chair’s job is to bridge viewpoints and help steer the negotiations. But a new chair alone will not bring the process back on track — we need deep reform of how the INCs function. That includes changing how decisions are made, how the contact groups (working groups) operate, and a return to a process that is led by Member States, not a UN institution with an agenda.
“As the INC begins its process of selecting a new chair, we strongly encourage the Bureau to proceed with transparency and allow adequate time for inclusive consultations to bring more balanced support to the future chair. As we near the end of the negotiation, the INC needs a chair who can successfully build from the past small achievements. They must learn from mistakes and fix the process, while bearing in mind that the INCs have shown that consensus cannot be the guiding star for multilateralism, especially if we are to have a plastics treaty that responds to the severity of the plastics crisis.”
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