Skip to main content

POLICY AND PRACTICE REVIEWS article

Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Pollution
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2024.1481635
This article is part of the Research Topic Advances in Marine Environmental Protection: Challenges, Solutions and Perspectives View all 27 articles

Environmental Legislation Analysis and Improvement Approach of Global Marine Plastic Pollution from the Perspective of Holistic System View

Provisionally accepted
  • Hainan University, Haikou, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Marine plastic pollution (MPP) has posed an unavoidable challenge to the conservation of marine ecosystems, escalating at an unprecedented rate. It extends beyond visible pollution, infiltrating the food chain and microcirculation, ultimately affecting the life and health of marine organisms. Of even greater concern is the fact that MPP has been found to penetrate human bloodstreams. The international community increasingly focuses on MPP, and has formulated a series of laws and regulations. This article analyses marine pollution prevention legislation within the context of international environmental resolutions and conventions, including those established by the United Nations, the European Union law and the domestic legislation of sovereign states. It is evident that the current legislation has played a pivotal role in the preventing MPP. However, global legislation on preventing MPP remains fragmented. The problems existing in the current legislation should be reviewed from the holistic systems perspective, and the integrity and systematicness of new plastics convention should be demonstrated. The proposed Marine Plastics Convention should emphasize environmental justice, protect the rights of vulnerable populations, lower the threshold for risk prevention, and focus on addressing residual risks. It must include clear provisions for regulating hydrosphere plastic pollution (HPP) to mitigate land-based pollution and scientifically define fundamental legal concepts to foster coordinated action among States. Moreover, the convention should establish standardized monitoring methodologies and assessment criteria to ensure accurate evaluation of the pollution status.

    Keywords: Holistic system view, Convention on Marine Plastics, environmental justice, Residual Risk, Monitoring methodologie, evaluation criteria

    Received: 16 Aug 2024; Accepted: 01 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Shuqing. 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: Xu s. Shuqing, Hainan University, Haikou, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.