资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

The ocean is home to coral reefs, the longest mountain chain in the world, ocean trenches and over 220,000 known species. It is also home to around 75 -199 million tons of plastic pollution.

By 2040, if changes aren’t urgently made, plastic pollution flowing into the ocean may increase from approximately 11 million metric tons a year to up to 37 million metric tons a year.

In October 2021, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released the From Pollution to Solution and Drowning in Plastics reports, both of which underscore the urgent need to address the severe threat of marine litter and plastic pollution.

The problem these reports outline is clear: marine litter and plastic pollution endanger human, wildlife and ecosystem health. Littering, mismanagement of waste streams and extreme events like floods, which are increasing due to climate change, increase the amount of plastic litter that ends up in the ocean. This also has economic ramifications, since the ocean generates US$2.5 trillion in goods and services a year and contributed to 31 million direct full-time jobs prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

UNEP’s programme of work tackles this pollution problem from source-to-sea, encompassing all systems – land, freshwater, riverine and estuarine, coastal, and open ocean. It also focuses on the design, production and consumption stages of waste management.

Clean Seas 2.0: From Source-to-Sea

Through the Clean Seas campaign, UNEP raises awareness and drives policy and legislative action on the issue of marine litter and plastic pollution. Launched in 2017, the campaign engages governments, the general public, civil society and the private sector to strengthen effective action plans on marine litter and plastic pollution. Currently, 63 countries are Clean Seas signatories.

Ahead of its fifth anniversary in February, the campaign is launching Clean Seas 2.0: From Source-to-Sea.  Building on the campaign’s initial focus on single-use plastics and their elimination, 2.0 will focus on communicating the root causes associated with the production, use and disposal of unnecessary, avoidable and problematic plastics. Its topic areas will cover a range of products, including packaging, ghost fishing gear, tyres and textiles.

Through this lens, Clean Seas will take an evidence-based approach to identify marine plastic pollution’s key sources, pathways and hazards, in order to galvanize global momentum for urgency and action.

Of the 11 million tons of plastic pollution that enters the sea every year, 2.7 million tons come from rivers. The Clean Seas 2.0 roadmap emphasizes the source-to-sea approach by leveraging two key river-focused UNEP projects: CounterMEASURE and the Mississippi River Plastic Pollution Initiative.

UNEP’s source-to-sea actions

The UNEP-implemented CounterMEASURE project uses cutting-edge technology to identify the source of plastic pollution in river systems in Asia – primarily the Ganges and Mekong. Through a combination of citizen science, drone imaging, machine learning and geographic analyses, the project collects data and identifies plastic waste hotspots. This data is shared with partner organizations and governments across the region, who integrate findings into campaigns, legislation, protocols and training sessions for civil servants and local authorities.

“While a lot of research has been undertaken on plastic debris in the ocean, less information exists on plastic pollution in rivers, particularly in Asia,” said Norwin Schaffer, Project Officer of the UNEP Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. “By gathering this information and providing it to policymakers, we are informing policies at local, regional and global levels.”