Abstract
Marine litter is seen as one of the most threatening types of pollution to our marine ecosystems. Recently, this issue has been gaining increasing recognition in international and regional fora, as exemplified by the resolution on marine debris adopted by the first United Nations Environmental Assembly in 2014. The reasons for this are the persistence of marine litter that might last for centuries in the oceans as well as its potential to cause harm to the marine environment, marine animals, society at large and potentially also human health. Whereas the potential impacts of marine litter are broadly identified, the management approaches to address this issue have been almost exclusively targeted towards specific sources of marine litter. The different approaches towards land or sea-based sources of marine litter have their limitations with regard to interconnected and cumulative character of marine litter or unknown or as of yet underestimated sources of marine litter. In order to provide comprehensive and coordinated approaches to overcome these challenges, regional actions plans on marine litter have been developed. These constitute a paradigm shift in marine litter management as they propose actions targeted at diverse sources of marine litter and address knowledge gaps with regard to these sources and the impacts of litter while being framed by common principles and approaches. The challenge remains to use the current political momentum to effectively implement and develop the envisaged measures on a national and regional basis.
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Notes
- 1.
Regulation 7 in conjunction with Regulation 10 MARPOL Annex V.
- 2.
River Basin Commissions provide the institutional framework to promote regional cooperation at a river basin level. The River Basin Commission for the river Elbe, for example, is the International Commission for the Protection of the Elbe River with a Secretariat in Magdeburg, Germany. Similar organisations are established for the rivers Danube, Moselle or Rhine for example.
- 3.
This relates amongst others to produce by 2020 a regional-wide map on landfills and dumpsites including historic ones which may eventually pose a risk to the marine environment. Other measures include to coordinate and share information among HELCOM Contracting Parties on the consumption of plastic bags on an annual basis by 2018 as well as to establish by 2019 a reduction target of plastic bags, taking into account the measures which are implemented nationally.
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Stöfen-O’Brien, A., Werner, S. (2018). Waste/Litter and Sewage Management. In: Salomon, M., Markus, T. (eds) Handbook on Marine Environment Protection . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60156-4_39
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