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When UN negotiations for a global plastics treaty collapsed in August, it wasn’t just another difficult meeting. It was a warning that the way the world organises environmental cooperation is truly stuck. In a new Comment in Nature, Utrecht ľ�ϸ���Ӱ��’s Rak Kim and Peter Bridgewater from the ľ�ϸ���Ӱ�� of Canberra call this pattern “institutional paralysis”: lots of meetings and decisions, but very little real-world impact.

The authors argue that many international environmental treaties were designed for a different era and for more manageable problems. Yet most of them have not been effective, making their problems bigger and overburdening themselves and others over time through spillovers. This is happening while resources are not increasing proportionally, leaving them chronically under-resourced.

Activity without progress

The result, say the authors, is activity without progress — like running hard just to stand still. Some environmental treaties project the image of being relevant and ever more important, which is vital for their survival, rather than acknowledging paralysis. Others increasingly turn to technological interventions that may only beget more problems.

Today’s institutions are being asked to do more with the same tools and the same rules that have delivered uneven results

Kim and Bridgewater’s central proposal is both pragmatic and bold: create a standing, government-mandated, independent expert body to assess the health of the global environmental governance system — not one treaty at a time, but the whole system as it actually works in practice. This body would regularly map what is effective (and what is not), recommend concrete reforms to the UN Environment Assembly, and require countries and treaty bodies to “consider or comply” with those recommendations. In other words, it would turn evidence into action.

Reforms needed

Crucially, the authors outline the kinds of reforms that may work. These include moving beyond blanket consensus where it blocks progress, enabling coalitions of willing countries to act faster, reallocating resources to where they are most needed, clarifying overlapping mandates, and, when necessary, merging or even retiring outdated “zombie” treaties to make room for more relevant institutions. The guiding test is simple: does the whole system add up to more than the sum of its parts, and is it safeguarding the planet’s life-support systems?

Why does this matter now? “Today’s institutions are being asked to do more with the same tools and the same rules that have delivered uneven results,” say the authors. Kim and Bridgewater contend that without systemic, evidence-based reform, the world will continue to see “action without impact”.