Achieving greater policy coherence and harmonisation for marine litter management in the North-East Atlantic and Wider Caribbean Region

Abstract

The effects of marine litter pose ecological, economic and optional value threats to the countries and territories on the margins of the Atlantic Basin. As the abundance of transboundary marine litter increases, this in turn has triggered the development of marine litter policy action plans and inter-regional collaboration. The OSPAR Commission and Cartagena Convention of North-East Atlantic (NEA) and the Wider Caribbean Region (WCR) respectively, have established a memorandum of understanding to facilitate collaboration for enhanced marine litter management. In light of this development, this paper conducts a scoping review of management measures of marine litter within these regions as well as a coherence analysis between their regional action plans (RAPs). The analysis uses a proactive framework based on a modified categorization by Chen (2015) and Williams and Rangel-Buitrago (2019) for comparatively analyse management measures. The analytical categorizations include legislation and enforcement measures, prevention, removal, monitoring, research, information management and exchange and education and outreach. Although specific approaches differed among the regions depending upon geographical and individual situations, each categorization included detailed management activities except for prevention in NEA and removal in the WCR. The comparative analysis demonstrates that there are opportunities for inter-regional cooperation, knowledge sharing and overall enhanced and informed marine litter management.