The trillion-dollar treaty takeover
How systematic corporate capture has transformed UN environmental negotiations into legitimacy theatre for the industries they were designed to regulate
Chemical company employees forming a "ring" around a university professor and shouting accusations during official United Nations negotiations represents something extraordinary. When this happened to Swedish ecotoxicologist Bethanie Carney Almroth at plastic pollution treaty talks in Ottawa, it revealed the true dynamics shaping humanity's environmental future.
At another session, a plastic packaging representative barged into an official UN meeting and screamed that Carney Almroth was spreading misinformation. She filed harassment reports; he apologised and departed—only to resurface at the next gathering. "That was one example when I filed an official report," she notes with studied understatement. "But I've been harassed and intimidated lots of other times."
Such intimidation tactics aren't conference aberrations—they're systematic warfare against independent expertise. Carney Almroth now uses privacy screen protectors because industry representatives "walk behind us and try to film what's on our screens." She never opens her laptop "without knowing who is behind me."
What unfolds in these negotiation halls reveals something profound: the capture of environmental democracy by the very interests it seeks to regulate.
When lobbyists outnumber nations
At December's plastic treaty negotiations in Busan—meant to finalise global environmental protection—220 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists outnumbered the host nation's entire delegation. They dominated independent scientists by three to one, Indigenous representatives by nine to one.
This wasn't conference planning mishap but calculated capture: the largest corporate lobbying deployment ever recorded at environmental talks, according to the Center for International Environmental Law.
Power asymmetries run deeper than raw numbers. Expensive travel costs favour well-funded industry over cash-strapped researchers and developing nations. "The lobbyists have much more access," Carney Almroth observes. "They can speak directly to ministers in ways that I cannot."
Industry penetrated even supposedly secure spaces. Countries including China, Egypt, and Iran embedded company representatives within official delegations, providing privileged access to closed-door treaty drafting sessions.
Financial tentacles extend far beyond conference halls. The UN Environment Programme depends on voluntary contributions for 95% of its budget. Saudi Arabia—whose Aramco owns one of the world's largest plastic producers—has donated over $20 million to UNEP since 2020, plus $1 million to host World Environment Day.
Such dependencies have consequences. UNEP Director Inger Andersen makes regular official visits to Riyadh, signing cooperation agreements whilst publicly undermining production caps as "not an intelligent conversation"—directly contradicting 1,100+ independent scientists demanding precisely such limits.
When watchdogs serve their targets
These financial relationships have consequences. UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen has made regular official visits to Saudi Arabia, meeting ministers and signing cooperation agreements on emissions reductions. In September 2024, she made a statement that environmental organisations perceived as undermining the importance of production caps: "We have to have a more refined conversation than just cap [or] no cap, because it's not an intelligent conversation."
Captured at the source
When 100+ environmental organisations complained to UN Secretary-General António Guterres about Andersen's apparent bias, they received no reply. The organisation accepting millions from plastic producers claims neutrality whilst systematically excluding independent scientists from key sessions.
Structural capture runs deeper still. Saudi Arabia engineered the election of its energy ministry official to the 10-person bureau controlling negotiations. The kingdom then deployed what environmental lawyers call "complete bad faith" tactics—using procedural obstruction refined through 35 years of climate negotiation sabotage.
Why Montreal won't repeat
Treaty advocates invoke the Montreal Protocol as proof environmental agreements can overcome industry resistance. The 1987 ozone accord achieved universal ratification and eliminated 99% of ozone-depleting chemicals.
This comparison fundamentally misunderstands Montreal's success. The treaty worked because economic incentives aligned: by 1986, chemical giant DuPont announced profitable alternatives to banned substances. Companies could make money from compliance rather than resistance.
No such alignment exists for plastic. Fossil fuel companies have invested $200+ billion in new petrochemical capacity precisely because plastic represents survival strategy as renewable energy threatens traditional markets. "Plastics is the Plan B for the fossil fuel industry," explains Judith Enck of Beyond Plastics.
This creates existential conflict no technical solution can resolve. Unlike CFCs—a peripheral product companies replaced profitably—plastic has become central to fossil fuel transformation strategy. Meaningful production limits would jeopardise core business survival.
Designed for deadlock
Negotiation architecture guarantees industry victory. Consensus requirements among 175 nations mean motivated minorities can block progress indefinitely. Industry needs only enough governmental support to prevent agreement; environmentalists require near-impossible universal cooperation against trillion-dollar opposition.
This asymmetry explains industry's lobbying flood whilst scientists face systematic exclusion. Every delay serves corporate interests as new petrochemical facilities under construction become sunk costs governments resist stranding. Meanwhile, deadline pressure forces environmentalists toward weak compromises rather than principled rejection.
David Azoulay of the Center for International Environmental Law identifies the fundamental perversion: "UNEP operates by considering that the people who created the problems, benefited from them, and lied about them for decades, are trustworthy partners to solve those problems."
Democracy's environmental endgame
These negotiations expose the systematic capture of multilateral environmental governance itself. Identical patterns now repeat across climate talks, biodiversity negotiations, and every major environmental challenge: massive lobbying operations, captured agencies, procedural complexity preventing action whilst maintaining democratic facade.
In Louisiana's "Cancer Alley," where petrochemical plants concentrate in predominantly Black communities, residents like Sharon Lavigne face cancer rates among America's highest. UN experts declared the region environmental racism, yet Formosa Plastics received permits for a plant releasing 7.7 tonnes of toxic ethylene oxide annually into already overburdened communities.
The treaty offers no protection for such frontline casualties. Instead, it provides international legitimacy for continued expansion whilst neutralising regulatory threats through endless process. Whether August's talks produce weak agreement or collapse entirely, outcomes serve industry interests equally.
This represents democracy's environmental dead end. When trillion-dollar interests systematically capture institutions designed to protect planetary health, multilateral systems reveal themselves as theatre rather than governance.
Professor Carney Almroth continues attending despite harassment, armed with privacy screens and constant vigilance. She represents embattled independent expertise that corporate capture hasn't yet eliminated. Whether her voice—and those of frontline communities bearing pollution's costs—can penetrate organised trillion-dollar opposition will determine not just treaty fate, but democracy's capacity to address existential environmental challenges.
The question facing Geneva transcends plastic pollution: can systematically captured negotiations produce meaningful environmental protection, or has the process itself become the primary obstacle to planetary preservation it claims to pursue?