Content uploaded by Mateo Cordier
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Mateo Cordier on May 09, 2020
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
Plastic pollution and economic growth: the influence of corruption and the lack of education
Abstract and Figures
Green economic growth fed by technological solutions is often mentioned to mitigate plastic pollution. But economic growth appears to be in contradiction to planetary boundaries. By developing two worldwide socioeconomic models based on non-technological solutions, economic production, social, and policy data, we demonstrate the adverse ecological impact of the lack of regulatory process and educational environmental programs. Our results support other studies that observe the effect of several key factors on behaviors in favor of the environment: i) improving the quality of democracy with better regulation in all country income categories, ii) implementing long-term educational programs to increase environmental awareness in low and middle income countries, iii) limiting urbanization and urban sprawl, which generates disconnection from the environment and reduces opportunities for personal experiences with the ecosystem. All these key factors feature industrial responsibility, environmental awareness and willingness to engage in ethical production, consumption and plastic waste management. Our results show a 1% increase in education or corruption control policies reduces annual inadequately managed plastic waste by 0.97% and 0.18% respectively. As a result, progressively raising the number of schooling years to 12 and implementing tighter corruption control policies would reduce by 44% and 28% respectively the global amount of inadequately managed plastic waste discarded into the global ecosystem in 2050 as compared to 1990. Otherwise, this amount is predicted to increase from 61-72 million tonnes per year in 1990 to 61-110 million tonnes per year in 2050.
Figures - uploaded by Mateo Cordier
Author content
All figure content in this area was uploaded by Mateo Cordier
Content may be subject to copyright.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
Plastics are non-biodegradable, and increasing accumulation of plastic debris in the ocean is a major cause for concern. The World Economic Forum, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, and McKinsey & Company claimed in 2016 that technological innovations can solve the plastic problem. Such a claim raises an as yet unanswered question: how much technological innovation is needed and is it economically feasible? We offer answers to this question via a system dynamics model that we developed to simulate different scenarios aimed at controlling plastic debris entering the global ocean. Our results show that ocean cleanup technologies could achieve a 25% reduction in the level of plastic debris in the ocean below 2010 levels in 2030. However, this would require removing 15% of the stock of plastic debris from the ocean every year over the period 2020–2030, which equates to 135 million tons of plastic in total (metric tons). The implementation cost of such an ocean cleanup effort would amount to €492 billion-€708 billion, which represents 0.7%–1.0% of the world GDP in 2017 – this calculation is based on unit costs in €/kg estimated in The Ocean Cleanup project feasibility study. The Ocean Cleanup project alone is designed to collect 70320 tons of plastic debris over a 10 year period. Removing 135 million tons of plastic debris would require investing in 1924 similar cleanup projects. These results help to assess the economic feasibility of removing such large volume of plastics. Moreover, our results provide quantitative confirmation that technological solutions alone are not sufficient to solve plastic pollution issues. A portfolio of diverse solutions – not only technological ones – is likely to have greater technical, political and economic feasibility. Our model shows that such a combined portfolio implemented over the period 2020–2030 could reduce the ocean plastic stock to 2013 levels (94 million tons) by 2030.
Governance is one of the most important factors for ensuring effective environmental management and conservation actions. Yet, there is still a relative paucity of comprehensive and practicable guidance that can be used to frame the evaluation, design, and analysis of systems of environmental governance. This conceptual review and synthesis article seeks to addresses this problem through resituating the broad body of governance literature into a practical framework for environmental governance. Our framework builds on a rich history of governance scholarship to propose that environmental governance has four general aims or objectives – to be effective, to be equitable, to be responsive, and to be robust. Each of these four objectives need to be considered simultaneously across the institutional, structural, and procedural elements of environmental governance. Through a review of the literature, we developed a set of attributes for each of these objectives and relate these to the overall capacity, functioning, and performance of environmental governance. Our aim is to provide a practical and adaptable framework that can be applied to the design, evaluation, and analysis of environmental governance in different social and political contexts, to diverse environmental problems and modes of governance, and at a range of scales.
Plastic pollution has become the new millennium's tragedy of the commons. This is particularly true with the marine debris plastic pollution issue, which has seen significant global interest recently. There is long-standing acknowledgment of the difficulty in managing the commons, with regulations, economic and market based instruments and community-based solutions all having a role to play. We review the global plastic pollution issue in the context of governance and policy, providing examples of successes, opportunities and levers for change. We discuss the role of regulation, public perception and social license to operate (SLO) in managing waste that enters the ocean. We argue that while plastic pollution is a tragedy, there are many opportunities for reduction, management, and changes to the global community's relationship with plastic.
Development of a Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM) plan is a complex process. As a foundation and prerequisite for efficient MSWM plan, quantification and prediction of Solid Waste (SW) generation is very much essentials. Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) prediction cannot be done directly and depends on so many factors. In actual practices, due to uncertainties and unavailability of sufficient data, modelling methods are needed for prediction of MSW generation. A number of researchers have predicted SW generation using various modeling methods. The main objective of this paper is to review such models related to MSW generation using economic, socio-demographic or management-orientated data and identify possible factors that will help in selecting the crucial design options within the framework of mathematical modeling. Five characteristic classification criteria, namely, modeling method, area covered, time series, independent variables and waste streams are focused in this review. The entire published models are diverse in nature for application from whole country to households. Successful modeling depends significantly on selection of waste stream. From the review and discussion of models the research aims to identify the limitations of previous models which will help in identifying the crucial design options within the framework of modeling. The study is concluded with a few fruitful suggestions.
We examined the hypothesis that in an emerging economy such as Chile the abundances of Anthropogenic Marine Debris (AMD) on beaches are increasing over time. The citizen science program Científicos de la Basura (“Litter Scientists”) conducted three national surveys (2008, 2012 and 2016) to determine AMD composition, abundance, spatial patterns and temporal trends. AMD was found on all beaches along the entire Chilean coast. Highest percentages of AMD in all surveys were plastics and cigarette butts, which can be attributed to local sources (i.e. beach users). The Antofagasta region in northern Chile had the highest abundance of AMD compared with all other zones. Higher abundances of AMD were found at the upper stations from almost all zones. No significant tendency of increasing or decreasing AMD densities was observed during the 8 years covered by our study, which suggests that economic development alone cannot explain temporal trends in AMD densities.
A substantial fraction of marine plastic debris originates from land-based sources and rivers potentially act as a major transport pathway for all sizes of plastic debris. We analyzed a global compilation of data on plastic debris in the water column across a wide range of river sizes. Plastic debris loads, both microplastic (particles <5 mm) and macroplastic (particles >5 mm) are positively related to the mismanaged plastic waste (MMPW) generated in the river catchments. This relationship is nonlinear where large rivers with population-rich catchments delivering a disproportionately higher fraction of MMPW into the sea. The 10 top-ranked rivers transport 88–95% of the global load into the sea. Using MMPW as a predictor we calculate the global plastic debris inputs form rivers into the sea to range between 0.41 and 4 × 10⁶ t/y. Due to the limited amount of data high uncertainties were expected and ultimately confirmed. The empirical analysis to quantify plastic loads in rivers can be extended easily by additional potential predictors other than MMPW, for example, hydrological conditions.
The promotion of environmental knowledge is viewed as a fundamental component of environmental education and a necessary prerequisite to ecological behaviour; however, it has little effect on actual behaviour. Nature-based environmental education, which combines the acquisition of environmental knowledge with the promotion of an intrinsic driver, namely connectedness to nature, is proposed as a holistic approach to increase ecological behaviour. This paper evaluates the effect of participation in nature-based environmental education in 4th to 6th graders (N = 255). As expected, increased participation in nature-based environmental education was related to greater ecological behaviour, mediated by increases in environmental knowledge and connectedness to nature. While both factors were similarly predicted by participation in nature-based environmental education, connectedness to nature explained 69% and environmental knowledge 2% of the variance in ecological behaviour. However, the design of our data do not evidence the causality of these relations, which are solely based on theoretical assumptions supported by literature. Nevertheless, the importance of fostering both environmental knowledge and connectedness to nature as complementary drivers of ecological behaviour, as offered by nature-based environmental education, should be researched further as a highly promising approach to fostering ecologically-motivated individuals.