Policy Agenda

BOX 4.1

Marine-Plastic Pollution within the International Policy Agenda

The issue of marine-plastic pollution has rightly caught the attention of international policy makers and researchers in recent years. In the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, SDG Target 14.1 refers directly to this issue: “By 2025, prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution.”a

Several international environmental organizations—including, among many others, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), Greenpeace, and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation—have made informing the world about the extent, threats, and combating of marine plastics one of their top priorities. Similarly, supranational organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and the European Commission have emphasized the importance of stanching the flow of plastics into the world’s oceans and seas. One prominent example, the 2021 introduction of the European Union (EU) Directive on Single-Use Plastics (SUPs),b tackles 10 SUP items and fishing gear that account for a large share of the waste that litters European beaches and pollutes the surrounding seas. (For more about the EU’s action plan to reduce marine litter, see box 4.9.)

The international attention to the issue of marine plastics also puts the Middle East and North Africa’s role into focus, especially regarding plastics flowing into the Mediterranean Sea—one of the global hot spots in this respect—and the region’s economies among the major contributors to this trend. The focus and efforts of international actors can give policy makers in the Middle East and North Africa a blueprint for how to best address the plastic tide in their seas, as this report also intends to do.

Moreover, the global momentum around this issue opens up possibilities to forge alliances and enter into cooperative initiatives and agreements that can benefit the region by supporting knowledge and technology transfers. These also include regional efforts across the Middle East and North Africa to induce learning processes and exploit knowledge spillovers tailored to the regional context. As this chapter discusses, these developments can benefit the region’s economies not only from an environmental perspective but also from an economic one through increased job creation in green sectors such as recycling or the development of plastic alternatives.

a. For more information about SDG 14 on Life below Water, including its specific targets and indicators, see the United Nations’ SDG 14 Knowledge Base page: https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal14. b. Directive 2019/904, of the European Parliament and of the Council of 5 June 2019 on the Reduction of the Impact of Certain Plastic Products on the Environment, 2019 O.J. (L 155/1).