Abstract
Marine litter has been considered one of the most serious global challenges, requiring urgent action by governmental bodies, especially in African Small Island Developing States (SIDS), where resources and research are limited. In addition to this, waste management and environmental education and ocean literacy programs in schools are scarce, with islands suffering more seriously from these problems. Despite the amount of literature regarding causes and impacts of marine litter, there is still not enough research conducted concerning the public perceptions on both the problem and the potential solutions. This is even more noticeable in African developing countries, where resources and research are scarce. Perception plays a key role for ecosystem management and conservation policies. This study intends to explore the perceptions of local island fishing communities in Cape Verde regarding marine litter, in order to contribute for an improvement of marine ecosystem management and development of conservation policies. To achieve that, two participatory sessions were conducted in two communities in the island of Santiago—Porto Mosquito and Porto Gouveia—where brainstorming and active listening were used to create shared and authentic spaces for dialogue between the members of the community. Results show that the population of both communities were very aware of the marine litter problem. They were able to identify the lack of a proper waste management system in the island and the inappropriate behaviours of the population as the main causes of this problem. Equipment damages and the presence of plastic inside the fish were the most relevant impacts identified by the participants. These findings reinforce previous research on the importance of public engagement and environmental education to contribute to the conservation of marine ecosystems and to build a strong collaborative ocean governance.
Highlights
The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in 2012, known as Rio+20, gave it particular attention and addressed this issue in the resolution adopted by the General Assembly, stating “We note with concern that the health of oceans and marine biodiversity are negatively affected by marine pollution, including marine debris, especially plastic, persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals and nitrogen-based compounds, from a number of marine and land-based sources, including shipping and land run-of ” [3]
According to OSPAR [10], the most common material types found in marine litter are plastic, sanitary waste, glass, metal, paper and rubber, it is evident that plastic items are the most abundant type of marine debris [8,11,12,13] accounting for around 80% of the total marine debris [8,14]
Many coastal communities in developing countries depend of the marine resources communities of developing countries are fully aware of the environmental problems surfor their income. They depend of the fisheries and on the recreational activities provided rounding them, including the presence of marine litter in coastal and marine ecosystems
Summary
Marine litter has been considered one of the biggest and most complex global environmental challenges, attracting growing attention and concern from a range of individuals, including researchers, media and political bodies [1,2]. 2015, stated the consequences of marine litter, in particular plastic litter, to marine and coastal ecosystems and human health, acknowledging this as a global challenge [4]. Marine litter is commonly defined as “any persistent, manufactured or processed solid material discarded, disposed of or abandoned in the marine and coastal environment” [1,5,6], and consists of, mainly, items originated by human activities that were deliberately or not discarded into the sea, rivers and the coastline (e.g., beaches). Due to its multifunctional properties and competitive prices, plastic became an extremely versatile product, used for food packaging, medicine tools, electronics, automotive design, among others [20], and, because of that, the amount of plastics entering the ocean per year is still unknown [12], even though it is increasing in some locations [15]
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