and 2025

FIGURE 4.3

Volume of Plastic Debris Entering the Seas from the Middle East and North Africa, by Economy, 2010 and 2025

0.5

) -plastic debris (megatons per year Marine 0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0 Egypt, Arab Rep.AlgeriaMoroccoYemen, Rep.Iran, Islamic Rep.Tunisia Syrian Arab Republic LibyaLebanon IraqDjiboutiSaudi Arabia West Bank and GazaKuwaitOmanBahrain United Arab Emirates MaltaJordan Qatar 2010 2025

Source: Based on Jambeck et al. 2015. Note: Figures for 2025 are projections.

Mediterranean-Polluting Countries

The Mediterranean Sea is today one of the most plastic-polluted seas in the world. This semi-enclosed area, surrounded by three continents and with intense human activity, works as a trap for plastics. For this reason, the Mediterranean is considered one of the six greatest accumulation zones for marine litter, together with the five “plastic islands” floating in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans (Cózar et al. 2014). The Mediterranean holds 1 percent of the world’s waters but contains 7 percent of the world’s marine-debris microplastics and is hence recognized as a global hot spot for targeted action (Alessi and Di Carlo 2018).

Every year, the Mediterranean receives 150,000–500,000 tons of macroplastics and 70,000–130,000 tons of microplastics.3

To put this into perspective, based on this estimate and recent fishstock accounting, more plastic flows into the Mediterranean Sea yearly than the combined annual volume of the two most commonly caught fish species (Boucher and Billard 2020).4 Recent research shows that microplastics are present in the atmosphere, and synthetic textiles are the main sources of airborne microplastics, which disperse widely throughout the environment because of atmospheric conditions and human activities. During the summer months, tourists along the Mediterranean Sea generate an additional 40 percent of waste that ends up in marine spaces. In total, an estimated 1,178,000 tons of plastics have accumulated in the Mediterranean (Boucher and Billard 2020).

Middle East and North Africa economies are major contributors to this continuing accumulation. Plastic waste in the Mediterranean comes mainly from four countries (of which two are in the Middle East and North Africa): Egypt (32.8 percent), Turkey (16.4 percent), Italy (10.7 percent), and Algeria (5.9 percent) (Boucher and Billard 2020). Other countries in the region (such as Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia) are also substantial contributors (figure 4.4). Marine-plastics hot spots tend to appear near the mouths of major rivers (for example, the Nile), which transport plastic waste from regions not directly bordering the Mediterranean Sea. They also tend to appear close to larger cities or other urban areas (Alessi and Di Carlo 2018; Boucher and Billard 2020).

Marine-Plastic Pollution of Other Seas in the Region

Relative to the Mediterranean, less is known about the pollution levels in the other seas of the region, but recent studies show increasing levels of microplastics in the Gulfs and the Red Sea. Microplastics are documented in abundance within these marine environments. Their presence in marine sediments poses a legitimate environmental concern for toxicity and food chain transfer via marine organisms.

Although the seas in the Regional Organization for the Protection of the Marine Environment (ROPME) Sea Area (RSA) are less well studied, recent research shows varying microplastics concentrations along the northern and southern coasts of the RSA but extremely high concentrations in biota along the coast of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Uddin, Fowler, and Saeed 2020).5 The predominant fibers found are polyethylene (PE), nylon, and PET (polyethylene terephthalate), which are commonly used in plastics bags, SUPs, bottles, discarded fishing gear, and urban and industrial outflows from washing synthetic clothes