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NAIROBI, Feb 28 (Reuters) - United Nations negotiators have agreed a roadmap for a global plastic treaty that would address plastic production and design, according to a draft resolution seen by Reuters, in what delegates said was a key step to agreeing an ambitious deal.

U.N. member states are meeting this week in Nairobi to agree plans for the first global agreement to tackle plastic pollution, a soaring environmental crisis that is destroying marine habitats and contaminating the food chain.

They hope to agree a full treaty within the next two years.

Going into the summit, the main sticking points were whether any agreement would be legally binding or voluntary, and if it would address plastic production and single-use packaging design or be confined to improving waste management and recycling.

A draft resolution, entitled "End plastic pollution: Towards an internationally legally binding instrument", said that the treaty should address "the full lifecycle of plastic", meaning production and design, as well as waste.

The draft text was finalised by technical experts in the early hours of Monday morning after a week of late-night negotiations. Government ministers and high-level officials joined the talks on Monday and were set to give final approval to the framework on Wednesday.

If the current draft were approved, it would be a setback for powerful oil and chemicals companies that manufacture plastic and had been working behind-the-scenes in an effort to keep talks focused on waste. read more

The draft resolution also recommended the treaty promote the sustainable design of plastic packaging so it can be reused and recycled, which would be significant for big consumer goods companies that sell their goods in single-use packaging.

An intergovernmental negotiating committee would be formed to agree the details of a full treaty with the goal of having an agreement ready for ratification in 2024, the draft said.

Inger Andersen, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEA), said on Monday that the informal talks had "yielded very significant results".

"I have complete faith that once endorsed by this assembly we will have something truly historic on our hands," Andersen told delegates at the official opening of the UNEA 5.2 summit.

"We all know that an agreement will only count if it is legally binding. If it adopts a full lifecycle approach, stretching from extraction to production to waste."

(The story corrects spelling of UN official's name in paragraphs 10 & 11)

Reporting by John Geddie in Nairobi and Joe Brock in Singapore; Editing by Alex Richardson

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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EXCLUSIVE UN plastic treaty to tackle production, packaging design - draft resolution

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United Nations negotiators have agreed a roadmap for a global plastic treaty that would address plastic production and design, according to a draft resolution seen by Reuters, in what delegates said was a key step to agreeing an ambitious deal.

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Why not focus more on transforming plastic production and market over individual consumption?

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Fully acknowledge indigenous communities rights by taking into account what the ocean and marine life stands for within different communities.

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You're out for your daily walk. You see a face mask on the ground. Few want to touch what has shielded someone's potentially virus-laden breath. So there it lies until it blows away-and that elemental problem is rapidly changing the landscape around the world, from grocery store parking lots to beaches on uninhabited islands.

Vaccines we mastered in record time to combat COVID-19. Litter in the time of the pandemic, it turns out, frustratingly defies solution.

A year ago, the idea that disposable face masks, gloves, and wipes could become global environmental pollutants was not a pressing concern. Personal protective equipment, PPE for short, was seen as essential for preventing the spread of COVID-19. No one imagined just how much of it would be needed, for so long. Then production exploded-and now the litter is inescapable.

In the time since, scientists have built a library of more than 40 studies that document the use and disposal of PPE and model what that looks like on a global scale. Numbers not known then tell the tale now.

Globally, 65 billion gloves are used every month. The tally for face masks is nearly twice that-129 billion a month. That translates into 3 million face masks used per minute.

A separate study reports that 3.4 billion face masks or face shields are discarded every day. Asia is projected to throw away 1.8 billion face masks daily, the highest quantity of any continent globally. China, with the world's largest population (1.4 billion) discards nearly 702 million face masks daily.

All may be called disposable, because they're cheap enough to be used once and then thrown away. But here's the hitch: They don't actually go away.

Disguised plastic

Face masks, gloves, and wipes are made from multiple plastic fibers, primarily polypropylene, that will remain in the environment for decades, possibly centuries, fragmenting into smaller and smaller microplastics and nanoplastics. A single face mask can release as many as 173,000 microfibers per day into the seas, according to a study in Environmental Advances.

"They're not going anywhere," says Nicholas Mallos, who oversees the Ocean Conservancy's marine debris program.

Littered face masks and gloves are blown like tumbleweeds into rivers and streams, which carry them to the seas. Scientists have recorded their presence on South American beaches, river outlets in Jakarta Bay, in Bangladesh, on the coast of Kenya, and on the uninhabited Soko Islands in Hong Kong. Discarded PPE has clogged street drains from New York City to Nairobi, and has gummed up machinery in the municipal sewage system in Vancouver, British Columbia.

The stuff is affecting animals. The innovative common coot, a foot-tall, white-faced bird, has been observed in the Netherlands carrying face masks away to build nests-assuming its large, gangly feet don't become entangled in the mask loops. That has happened, sometimes fatally, to swans, seagulls, peregrine falcons, and songbirds, according to a study in Animal Biology.

Face masks, gloves, and wipes are not recyclable in most municipal systems and should not be added to any household recycling bin. Masks can contain a mix of paper and polymers, including polypropylene and polyester, that can't be separated into pure streams of single materials for recycling. They are also so small they get caught in recycling machinery, causing breakdowns. (PPE used in medical facilities is disposed of as hazardous medical waste.)

Joana Prata, an environmental health researcher at Portugal's University of Porto, and lead author of a study on pandemic repercussions on plastics, noted that citizens need clear information on use and disposal of PPE. "This includes proper disposal as mixed waste in closed leak-proof bags," she wrote.

A larger global problem gets worse

The problems created by PPE litter have arrived at a complicated time in the effort to curb plastic waste. The amount of plastic waste accumulating in the oceans is forecast to triple in the next 20 years, with no real solution on the horizon. If every corporate pledge to use more recycled plastics were kept, the shift would reduce that projected tripling by just 7 percent.

The pandemic has also seen increased production of disposable packaging, as consumers have bought more takeout food, and as bans of single-use plastics, including shopping bags, were suspended because of fears that reusables would spread the virus. At the same time, in part due to cuts in cash-strapped municipal budgets, a third of the recycling companies in the United States have been partially or completely shuttered.

Assessing the spread

As face masks and gloves became increasingly visible, the Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit that advocates for ocean protections, began last summer to assess the pervasiveness of PPE litter around the world. The organization added PPE to its mobile app that allows volunteers to document trash items and upload them to the organization's website. In a global survey of volunteers who participated in beach cleanups in summer 2020, 107,219 individual items of PPE litter were documented, though the group's leaders concluded that figure is likely a "vast underestimate."

A better measure may come from the volunteers themselves; 94 percent reported seeing face masks, gloves, and other PPE litter in their communities on a regular basis, while half said they see PPE litter daily. Forty percent reported seeing PPE litter in streams, rivers, and oceans.

"The problem is huge; there's no hiding that," Mallos says. "But remember, this is on top of the existing global crisis of plastic waste. It's a matter of public health, and also ocean health."

The group has pressed for phasing out of redundant and unnecessary plastic packaging, and since the pandemic, for improvement in takeout food packaging, replacing it with other packaging materials such as cardboard that don't have the same impact as plastic packaging when discarded.

What can be done?

Within days after the pandemic was declared last March, Justine Ammendolia, a marine researcher based in Toronto and a National Geographic Society grantee, noticed face masks and gloves in increasing numbers as she took her daily walks. She also noticed lack of structured monitoring of PPE by any governmental or other organization as it spread throughout the city.

To identify hotspots, Ammendolia herself documented face masks, gloves, and wipes at six sites, including two grocery store parking lots, a hospital district, two residential areas, and a recreational trail. She logged 1,306 items over five weeks last summer. Not surprisingly, the grocery parking lots had the most, followed by the hospital district.

"It's not the biggest amount of plastic in the world," she says, "But, the thing is, we're going to be changed after this event, as is our relationship with disposability. This raises attention to the amount of waste being produced.That is the starting point of the conversation."

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How to stop discarded face masks from polluting the planet

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Personal protective equipment is made of plastic and isn't recyclable. Now it's being found everywhere on earth, including the oceans. The solution isn't complicated: Throw them away.

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The pandemic has revealed once again how vulnerable the ocean is to our production and consumption and therefore the urgent need for us to have a more reliable and effective waste management and recycling infrastructure.

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https://www.bbc.com/news/business-50233206

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"Have a pleasant journey," blurts the tannoy, as the engines ramp up and we pull away from the harbour in Fynshav, southern Denmark.

I'm aboard Ellen, an electric-powered ferry, sailing to the island of Ærø, in the west Baltic Sea.

On the ship's bridge, Captain Thomas Larsen stands behind a panel with controls and electronic charts. "What I can see on these two screens is a power management system," he points out. "It shows me all my batteries. And how far I can expect to go."

"The main difference is that I don't have a full fuel tank. I need to think a lot about how I'm using my power."

As we talk an alarm starts beeping. "Oh this tells me I do not have power for a new return trip without recharging," Captain Larsen says calmly.

Powered entirely by batteries, Ellen is something of a Tesla among ferries. Fully charged, the 60m vessel can sail 22 nautical miles with up to 200 passengers and 30 cars onboard.

That's a roughly 40km (25-mile) round-trip, and seven times further than other electric ferries.

Ellen replaces an older diesel-powered vessel, and in the onboard cafe passengers welcome the change.

"It doesn't make so much noise. And no smoke from the diesel - it's good," one traveller tells me.

"It's very quiet. You don't feel anything. It's a great idea also for the environment," says another.

"Ferry shipping in general is very dirty business," says Halfdan Abrahamsen, an information officer from Ærø EnergyLab, as he shows me around.

Ships usually use marine diesel or heavy fuel oil, "which is just about the bottom of the food chain when it comes to product from refineries," says Mr Abrahamsen.

The only oil onboard Ellen is for the gearbox and in the kitchen for making French fries, he says.

The emission-free ferry is expected to reduce CO2 emissions by 2,000 tonnes a year. It's part of an EU-backed project to develop green ferries for longer routes.

Beyond a set of heavy metal doors, lies the engine and two battery rooms, where 840 lithium-ion batteries supplied by Swiss firm Leclanché, are stacked from floor to ceiling.

Totalling 4.3MWh, it has the biggest battery capacity of any ship at sea and equivalent to the average amount of electricity a UK household consumes each year.

And that means it can sail further than any other electric ferry operating at the moment, according to Kimmo Rauma, vice-president of Danfoss Editron, the Finland-based company behind the electrical propulsion and charging technology.

After a 70 minute voyage, Ellen arrives at the harbour in Søby and moors alongside the charging station.

A mechanical arm plugs in and recharges the batteries in less than 25 minutes with clean energy supplied by local wind turbines.

Ellen is not fully operational just yet, and it hasn't all been smooth sailing. Building a boat with so many batteries is complex and since being launched some battery cells have been replaced.

"They're getting lighter and more energy dense, but they're still heavy," Trine Heinemann, the E-Ferry project coordinator explains, as we stand on the dockside.

"The more energy you need, the more batteries you need, the more weight you add. You then have to start thinking about how do we take other weight away from the ship? How do you build the most energy-efficient ship?"

A lower resistance design and more lightweight materials were used, contributing to Ellen's low running costs.

"We are paying maybe 25% of what you would pay for running a similar diesel vessel." says Ms Heinemann. "So that's the significant saving."

Maintenance costs are much lower too. A diesel engine has about 30,000 moving parts, in an electric motor it's just the bearings that need maintenance, Dr Rauma says.

The ferry has cost €21.3m (US$23.6m; £18.3m), with the EU's Horizon 2020 programme funding €15m.

"It's maybe 40% more expensive than a conventional diesel vessel," Ms Heinemann says.

"Then you still have the transformer and the electrical infrastructure. So in terms of establishing an electrical vessel, we are looking at a significantly higher cost."

So while battery power is certainly greener, is it commercially viable? The team believes so.

"Some say within 14 months you break even and then it's saving from then on. We're being a little bit more conservative and saying maybe four or five years," says Ms Heinemann.

At Søby Shipyard, where Ellen was built, chief executive Roar Falkenberg thinks costs will come down.

"Ellen was a prototype. I think when we build the next Ellen, it will be only cost a bit more than a normal ferry. And if you look three to five years ahead, I think the price will be the same."

Batteries are getting more cost-competitive says Dr Tristan Smith, a shipping and energy expert from University College London, thanks largely to better technology and stricter emissions rules.

"If you have strong air quality regulation then you aren't able to burn the worst quality marine fuels," he says, "which then makes the battery more competitive, because it's now competing against the more expensive fossil fuel."

The shipping industry is responsible for around 3% of global CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions. In April 2018, the International Maritime Organisation set new targets to reduce these emissions by "at least 50% by 2050 compared to 2008" levels.

That's spurring industry players to explore new emission-cutting measures including alternatives fuels like LNG, biofuel, also hydrogen and ammonia which Dr Smith thinks show most promise.

Nordic countries have led a shift towards hybrid and electric power. The first fully-electric car ferry was launched in Norway a few years ago, and the operator Norled is now developing, what it claims will be the world's first hydrogen-fuelled ferry.

"The technology is ready," says Danfoss Editron's Kimmo Rauma. "The question is that the maritime industry is not the fastest to change."

His firm has supplied electric technology for patrol-boats, icebreakers, and fish farming service boats.

It also developed Asia's first e-ferry in Taiwan. He says retrofitting older diesel vessels with electric engines, particularly in city harbour areas, is a "big opportunity" to reduce pollution.

However experts say that scaling up battery power for large ships has significant limitations.

"The common denominator for successful battery use is that the vessels operate close to shore," says Maria Skipper Schwenn, a director at industry body, Danish Shipping.

"The operational reach is limited simply due to the capacity of the battery itself. It's simply not possible today when you are sailing more than 10 or 20 days at sea. In addition to that you need an enormous charging capacity in the port."

"With the technology we have right now... it doesn't seem like a viable solution for the deep-sea shipping. But for ferries, supply ships and tugboats, it's an excellent solution."

Back at Søby Shipyard, Roar Falkenberg agrees. "The key is how much energy can you store in the battery. If you have to sail from England to the United States, you need a lot! And then you can't have any cargo, you can only have batteries. Maybe in 10 years, 15 years, there will be other ways for longer ship routes."

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Plug-in and sail: Meet the electric ferry pioneers

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"Have a pleasant journey," blurts the tannoy, as the engines ramp up and we pull away from the harbour in Fynshav, southern Denmark. I'm aboard Ellen, an electric-powered ferry, sailing to the island of Ærø, in the west Baltic Sea. On the ship's bridge, Captain Thomas Larsen stands behind a panel with controls and electronic charts.

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mapping out macro and, if there are, micro plastic recovery global projects/technologies to analyse efficiency and financial needs. This comes alongside best practises to curb marine pollution. The One Ocean Summit in Brest, France, last month has highlighted culprits, like industrial ocean pollution through container shipping, illegal fishing and unsustainable fishing parctises. Plastic pollution from  land to ocean.  

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mapping out macro and, if there are, micro plastic recovery global projects/technologies to analyse efficiency and financial needs. This comes alongside best practises to curb marine pollution. The One Ocean Summit in Brest, France, last month has highlighted culprits, like industrial ocean pollution through container shipping, illegal fishing and unsustainable fishing parctises. Plastic pollution from  land to ocean.  

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this is a bit old but still relevant

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The Covid-19 lockdown has produced the quietest year for the world's oceans in recent memory, according to a group of scientists working on a global map of underwater soundscapes.

Noise pollution from ship engines, trawling activities, oil platforms, subsea mining and other human sources declined significantly last spring, say the researchers, who are part of a collaborative network of 231 non-military hydrophones.

They believe the relative hush can provide valuable comparative data for an unplanned experiment in how sound affects whales, coral and other marine species.

Like light pollution on the land, human noise is a growing concern in the oceans because it has been proven to disrupt species that depend on sound for communication and navigation. Low-frequency signals can travel thousands of kilometres.

Studies in the north-east Pacific showed an increase of 3 decibels each decade in human-generated sounds below 100 hertz between the 1960s and early 2000s. By one reckoning, the volume of this audio pollution is now around the same level as the natural background noise of the ocean.

This faded substantially last year at the height of lockdown in March, April and May, starting - like Covid - around China and then spreading worldwide. The volume surged back to a new height in the summer as shipping companies rushed to make up for lost time. Sound levels have now stabilised close to the average for recent years.

Scientists have retrospectively declared 2020 "the year of the quiet ocean" and the data from this exceptional period will be published in the coming months in scientific journals.

"Be prepared for exciting results," said Jesse Ausubel, the director of the Program for the Human Environment at the Rockefeller University. The oceans are unlikely to be as quiet as during April 2020 for many decades to come.

The softening of human sound was most evident in coastal areas and shipping lanes. Jennifer Miksis-Olds, the director of the Center for Acoustics Research and Education at the University of New Hampshire, said this created conditions for a "natural experiment. Since the Industrial Revolution, she said, human noise has masked the ambient sounds of wind, waves and ice and forced marine life to adapt in a similar way to customers in a noisy restaurant, who have to raise their voices or repeat themselves to be understood.

This is part of a bigger project. Ausubel is the founder of the International Quiet Ocean Experiment, a 10-year plan launched in 2015 to create a time series of measurements of ambient sound in many ocean locations. Part of the goal is create evidence to persuade ship operators, oil and gas facilities and jetski users to dampen their decibels for the sake of marine ecosystems.

"We'd like the word soundscape to become a lot better known. Sound is light in the oceans. It illuminates the ocean for many animals. They use it to communicate, to hunt, and can be harmed by noise at excess," Ausubel said.

He and colleagues - including specialists at St Andrews - plan to expand the hydrophone network, particularly in the southern hemisphere, to more than 500 devices. Using modelling and data collaborations with shipping companies and other ocean users, they hope to produce a global map of ocean sound within the coming years. This should reveal important patterns, such as increases in noise along shipping lanes and near oilfields and windfarms, which could prove as important for ocean health and regulation as roadside air pollution monitoring, or water-contamination measurements near factories.

There is a long way to go. Currently, there are relatively detailed soundscapes of busy areas, such as the North Sea, and then piecemeal, one-off studies from other regions. Filling in the gaps will require a major effort to share data and make reporting consistent across time and place.

Two important steps in this direction were announced this week with the launch of a new software tool, known as Manta (Making Ambient Noise Trends Accessible) and developed by an international team of experts coordinated by Miksis-Olds, to standardise ocean sound recording data. There have also been tests of a new platform to share acoustic data worldwide, the Open Portal to Underwater Sound ( Opus), which is being hosted by the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany.

Ausubel compared the recent developments in the soundscape network to the completion of a ring of satellites around the equator in 1979. Back then, there was a party in the World Meteorological Office in Geneva to celebrate the fact that scientists could monitor the entire atmosphere for the first time.

"We are now at the onset of an era in which we can observe ocean soundscapes in much the same way," he predicted.

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Pandemic made 2020 'the year of the quiet ocean', say scientists

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The Covid-19 lockdown has produced the quietest year for the world's oceans in recent memory, according to a group of scientists working on a global map of underwater soundscapes. Noise pollution from ship engines, trawling activities, oil platforms, subsea mining and other human sources declined significantly last spring, say the researchers, who are part of a collaborative network of 231 non-military hydrophones.

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https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/overfishing-sustainable-technology-innovation/

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UpLink

The humble fishing net is due an upgrade. Image: REUTERS/Kham

Senior Writer, Formative Content

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LED lights attached to fishing nets can attract the right catch and guide non-targeted species to safety. Image: SafetyNet Technologies

Global fish production reached its highest-ever level in 2018, at 96.4 million tonnes. Image: FAO

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This is how smart technology is helping to combat overfishing

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UpLink The humble fishing net is due an upgrade. Image: REUTERS/Kham Senior Writer, Formative Content Stay up to date: UpLink Follow LED lights attached to fishing nets can attract the right catch and guide non-targeted species to safety. Image: SafetyNet Technologies Global fish production reached its highest-ever level in 2018, at 96.4 million tonnes.

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Education for sustainable development with a systemic approach in blue economy and green economy 

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Education for sustainable development with a systemic approach in blue economy and green economy 

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Education for sustainable development with a systemic approach in blue economy and green economy 

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Education for sustainable development with a systemic approach in blue economy and green economy 

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Pandemic-associated plastic waste (increased face masks, single-use disposable products, delivery packages) polluting the ocean.

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With no transparent governance, it is impossible to address most challenges. How one can protect the biodiversity if there is noone to handle the issue?

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Coral Triangle Initiative in Southeast Asia

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Coral Triangle Initiative in Southeast Asia

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Drivers and barriers for the reduction of single-use plastics in the member countries of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM)

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Drivers and barriers for the reduction of single-use plastics in the member countries of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM)

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Drivers and barriers for the reduction of single-use plastics in the member countries of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) – Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF)

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PUBLISHED BY:
Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) 31 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Singapore 119595

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Note: The data may be updated periodically as more information become available.

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IUCN produces publications on a wide range of topics to share our expertise on nature, conservation and sustainable development. Publications include reports, analyses, best practices, standards, periodicals from IUCN Commissions and numerous other types of knowledge from the Union.