Analysing several ASEAN countries' policy for combating marine plastic litter

Abstract

The recent 34th ASEAN Summit, held in Thailand in June 2019, issued two important documents related to the marine environment’s protection, namely The Bangkok Declaration on Combating Marine Debris in the ASEAN Region and the ASEAN Framework of Action on Marine Debris (Framework of Action). Therefore, this research analyses the several policies implemented by ASEAN countries to reduce marine plastic litter. This is primarily assessed using several indicators by Konisky and Woods, namely (1) programmatic indicators of state environmental policy activism, which is usually incorporated into an index reflecting the quality of the national ecological system, (2) the amount of money spent by the state government on environmental protection, (3) the number of private-sector expenditure on environmental pollution reduction, also used as a proxy for the stringency of state environmental regulation and (4) counts of state environmental regulatory enforcement actions. This research showed that ASEAN countries consider that the process used in handling marine plastic litter needs to be resolved collaboratively and comprehensively. Therefore, each country already has programmatic indices and regulatory actions with the majority relatively weak on other indicators, primarily on government expenditures, enforcement programs and pollution abatement costs.