Marine Litter Vital Graphics

Marine Litter

Vital Graphics

East Asian Seas, Eastern Africa

, South Asian Seas, ROPME

Sea Area,

Mediterranean

, North-East Pacific,

North-West

Pacific

, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, South-East Pacific,

Pacific, and

Western Africa

. The four other Regional Seas

programmes cover the Antarctic, Arctic, Baltic Sea and

North-East Atlantic regions. Most of these programmes

function through an Action Plan, underpinned in most

cases by a regional sea convention and its associated

protocols, or by other legal frameworks on different

aspects of marine environmental protection.

The Regional Seas Conventions and Action Plans are

instrumental in supporting the implementation of the GPA

at regional levels and have developed, or are in the process

of developing, regional sea action plans on marine litter. The

regional plans take into account the environmental, social

and economic situation of each regional sea and they vary in

the detail and extent of actions recommended to the states

(UNEP, 2016a). While, for example, in the Mediterranean the

strategic framework includes legally binding measures, the

regional action plans for the Baltic and North Atlantic are

built around a set of fundamental principles and, similar to

the G7 Action Plan, a series of regional and national actions to

address land-based and sea-based sources, priority removal

actions and priority actions on education, research and

outreach. Otherwise in the Pacific marine debris has been

identified as a priority area in the broader Pacific Regional

Waste and Pollution Management Strategy 2015–2016.

Regional and national policies

The European Union, through its member states,

has become a leading voice for defining marine

environmental policy in the European Seas (Baltic, Black

Sea, Mediterranean and North Atlantic). Through the

regional seas, its influence reaches beyond the borders

of the European Union and the waters of its member

states. It has adopted a number of measures on waste

management, packaging and environmental protection

that are relevant to the reduction of marine plastic debris

and are applicable to the 28 member states of the EU. Some

of the regulations are devised within the EU, such as the

Marine Strategy Framework Directive, an integral policy

instrument for the protection of the marine environment

for the European Community. The Directive, adopted in

2008, aims at achieving Good Environmental Status by

2020 through 11 areas, one of which is devoted to marine

litter, assessed through a series of indicators and targets.

The EU has also developed other instruments relevant to

marine litter, such as the EU Port Reception Facility Directive

in force since 2002, aimed at transposing MARPOL 73/78,

and land-based waste management initiatives such as the

Packaging Waste Directive, the Waste Framework Directive,

the Landfill Directive and the Urban Waste Water Directive

(Chen, 2015). More specifically, the European Strategy

on Plastic Waste in the Environment looked at aspects of

plastic production, use, waste management, recycling and

resource efficiency, in order to facilitate the development

of more effective waste management guidelines and

legislation (UNEP, 2016a).

Many national and local instruments have been developed

that are relevant to marine litter. Of course the diversity of

instruments increases dramatically where they have national

or local scope, due to the fact that these instruments are

tailored to the specific environmental and socioeconomic

characteristics or the geographical area covered by the

regulation. As is the case for regional instruments, some

states (e.g. Japan, Korea, Singapore and the Netherlands)

have developed overarching national legislation and

policies to address marine litter, but such legislation remains

uncommon globally. Up until now the more common

practice has been to adopt overarching instruments under

international or regional cooperation frameworks. Where

states have overarching legislation, it often serves as a

coordinating and planning mechanism, helping to integrate

the existing instruments and to design priority actions.

In addition to, or in place of, overarching approaches

there are many instruments addressing specific aspects of

marine litter. These can be broadly regarded as upstream

instruments, such as prohibiting and disincentivizing the

manufacture and use of materials and products susceptible

to becoming marine plastic debris or microplastics. There

are also downstream instruments which address the

adequate disposal of waste on land or at sea.

Upstream manufacturing instruments address, at various

levels, the production of plastic pellets (California), plastic bags

(Bangladesh, South Africa, China and Rwanda), polystyrene

foam (Haiti and Vanuatu) and microbeads (Canada, USA

federal government and nine states). Regulations using

extended producer responsibility in the manufacture of

plastic and plastic items are also in place in Canada, Japan,

Australia and New Zealand. The most common upstream

instruments in retail use target plastic bags including bans,

regulation of bag thickness, taxes on end-user bags or a

combination of these. Bans are also in place locally on single

use food and drink related plastic products (Tamil Nadu in

India and Bangladesh) and on those using polystyrene foam

(NewYork City and several cities in California) (UNEP, 2016b).

Downstream instruments on land take the form of mandatory

recycling and separation, the collection of waste and disposal

in adequately located and managed facilities and landfills,

incineration and planning, and disaster preparedness,

which are in place in many countries (UNEP, 2016b).

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