ASEAN’s plastics act

Plastic waste is clogging up the waterways of Southeast Asia. In the last 35 years, the use of plastics in the region has multiplied nearly ninefold. This month, regional leaders tried to take a step to cleaning up the mess.

At the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit this month in Cebu, Philippines, the bloc adopted the ASEAN Leaders’ Declaration on Maritime Cooperation, calling for developing a successor document to the ASEAN Regional Action Plan for Combating Marine Debris and a possible agreement on marine plastics pollution.

Southeast Asia produces roughly 20% of global plastic – approximately 31 million tonnes annually – yet has no binding regional framework to manage it. More than half of waste generated in ASEAN remains uncollected.

ASEAN’s fragmented governance on plastic pollution not only fails environmentally but undermines the region’s ability to shape global solutions. An international plastics treaty has been under negotiation for several years via the United Nations Environment Program but remains stymied. Some of this reflects intra-regional divisions. ASEAN member states arrived at the most recent round of international talks divided – the Philippines and Thailand pushing ambitious production targets, Malaysia aligning with the low-ambition coalition, and Indonesia relatively passive.

ASEAN has not been idle – The Bangkok Declaration on Combating Marine Debris in 2019 and the Regional Action Plan for Combating Marine Debris 2021–25 represent genuine regional efforts toward finding a solution. Yet neither framework is legally binding – and without binding mechanisms, commitment on paper rarely translates to action on the ground.

ASEAN member states face deep challenges in managing plastic waste: fragmented standards and a lack of financial connectivity between investors and small-scale recycling entrepreneurs. On top of that, ASEAN member states have developed their own waste management and plastic pollution reduction strategies. There is not yet a unified governance system serving as a platform for governments to collectively address the challenges – from plastic grades standards to government procurement requirements for recycled materials. Individual strategies exist – Thailand’s Roadmap, Cambodia’s Circular Strategy, Malaysia’s Single-Use Plastics Roadmap – but regional coordination remains absent.

China’s policy shift in recent years away from accepting waste has also shifted the plastic burden back to ASEAN members that used to ship waste offshore.

Addressing plastic pollution requires public engagement. Awareness across ASEAN remains low. Behaviour change must be paired with system change, ensuring discussions between policymakers and experts reach the people most affected. At a regional policy dialogue convened by CSEAS, NIVA, and Universiti Malaya in February 2025, experts repeatedly identified low public awareness as a critical barrier – knowledge that rarely travels beyond conference rooms.

Lessons can be drawn from ASEAN’s efforts to combat Southeast Asia’s haze problems emerging in the late 1990s to 2010s. This saw several frameworks established, notably the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution (AATHP), the bloc’s first legally binding environmental agreement. The signing of AATHP provided the mandate to establish the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Transboundary Haze Pollution Control (ACC THPC) and to develop national action plans, peatland management strategies, investment frameworks, and regular ministerial reviews. Haze problems persist – Indonesia was slow to ratify and palm oil plantation revenues outweighed environmental commitments. The consensus-based approach in ASEAN has resulted in weak enforcement and a lack of binding accountability. Yet the experience still created a precedent demonstrating that ASEAN can achieve environmental cooperation.

The declaration at the most recent ASEAN leaders’ summit indicates that political will is converging across the bloc to tackle the plastics problem. Patience will be needed, along with persistence. Learning from the haze timeline, which took roughly 12 years to achieve a binding agreement and had to negotiate entrenched economic interests, a binding plastics agreement by the early 2030s seems realistic – with the Bangkok Declaration as the 2019 starting point.

The difference between this moment and past experience depends on whether member states are willing to build a plastics agreement with strong accountability mechanisms. If ASEAN cannot overcome this hurdle in designing a plastic governance framework, the successor to the Regional Action Plan risks becoming another commitment on paper.

If ASEAN can consolidate a unified position in its own region, the grouping can demand that any international treaty address the full plastic life cycle – technology transfer, equitable funding, and checks on transboundary waste streams. ASEAN can then arrive at the table as a development-sensitive bloc rather than 11 fragmented voices.