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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Conserv. Sci.
Sec. Human-Wildlife Interactions
Volume 5 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/fcosc.2024.1341434
This article is part of the Research Topic Impacts of People's Engagement in Nature Conservation View all 7 articles
Haunting the Ganges: Addressing the issues of ghost gear in the Ganga River through an incentive-based institutional mechanism
Provisionally accepted- 1 Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, India
- 2 Zoological Society of London, London, Camden, United Kingdom
Abandoned, lost, or otherwise discarded fishing gears, also known as ghost gears (GG), are major contributors to global marine and freshwater plastic pollution. Such GG can lead to the accidental entanglement of several threatened freshwater and marine species, especially the air-breathing aquatic vertebrates, which is a matter of global concern. There is a lack of knowhow and mechanisms for collecting and recycling such GG, leading to their constant accumulation in aquatic ecosystems. In this study, we have examined the mortalities of threatened aquatic species in fishing nets and have proposed an incentive-based standard operating procedure (SOP) for effective collection and disposal of GG based on field observations and extant national and international policies and made recommendations for a net buyback scheme as a possible downstream solution to reduce GG in the Ganga River Basin.It is proposed that the collection of GG can be done by the local level institutions of fishing community through the fair-price shops. The nets are then to be deposited at the block-level processing centres to be transported to the district-level consolidating centres. Recycling partners identified by the Government of India will then collect the nets directly from district centres for further upcycling and recycling. A multi-level, multi-stakeholder approach with strong upstream and downstream linkages backed with appropriate policy interventions is needed to tackle the ghost gear issue in the Ganga River basin.
Keywords: Plastic pollution, Aquatic ecosystem, Ghost nets, buyback schemes, Grassroots institutions
Received: 20 Nov 2023; Accepted: 28 Aug 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 Badola, Gill, Dobriyal, Patel, Khan and Hussain. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Srishti Badola, Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, India
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