Does UNEP Read Their Own Reports?

As reported in the June 10th online news outlet Environmental Leader, top United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) executive officer Achim Steiner has called for a global ban or rapid phase-out of plastic bags. A recent report by UNEP indicates,

that plastic bags are the most pervasive form of ocean litter and that despite several international, regional and national efforts to reverse marine pollution, ocean litter continues to endanger people’s safety and health, entrap wildlife, damage nautical equipment and deface coastal areas around the world.

No complaints from me on the insidious problems presented by marine debris. There's the basic aesthetic damage plastic debris creates on beaches and other coastal ecosystems like salt marshes, mangrove forests, and coral reefs. I don't think I've snorkeled or dived a reef in recent years where I did not see a coral colony here or there festooned in discarded plastic bags. But then there are the life-threatening hazards that plastic bags present to marine life from either entanglement (as seen in the shore bird at the top of this post) or injestion (turtle on left).

But here's the thing. While the 2009 UNEP report Marine Litter: A Global Challenge clearly demonstrates that plastic bags are the #1 plastic scourge on oceans, it's difficult to understand UNEP's executive director's conclusions that a ban on plastic is the solution when yet another 2009 UNEP Report indicates that bans simply do not work.

Seba Sheavly, one of the co-authors of the UNEP report Guidelines on the Use of Market-based Instruments to Address the Problem of Marine Litter, says that calls for bans on plastic bags were not among the primary recommendations. In fact, this UNEP report cautions that bans can have unintended consequences, impacts, and policy costs from the replacement products that are used to fill the void left by the banned material. As Sheavly points out,

There is more to reducing the presence and impacts of marine litter than banning various products — people and how they handle their solid wastes is the foundation of this issue in the first place. Getting the public to recognize their contributions to this problem is essential to developing any long-term, lasting solutions. Marine litter would not exist if solid wastes were not improperly handled by people in the first place.

So what does UNEP recommend?

Like other environmental problems, marine debris can be prevented and controlled through an effective collaboration of education and outreach programs, strong laws and policies, governmental and private enforcement, and adequate support infrastructure. Developing effective policies that will reduce this problem requires a comprehensive understanding of the sources and impacts of marine debris as well as an understanding of human behavior and how it is affected by economic policies.

While acknowledging the need for a comprehensive approach, UNEP recommends focusing on the potential for using economic tools--referred to as “market-based instruments” (MBIs)--to address plastic bag reduction. MBIs have a potentially important role to play in addressing marine litter, when used as part of an integrated strategy. For example, one program that offers attractive “bounties” for fishers to bring abandoned nets to shore also requires that these nets and gear be recycled, incinerated and/or otherwise properly disposed of in port.

Market-based instruments include taxes, charges, fees, fines, penalties, liability and compensation schemes, subsidies and incentives and tradable permit schemes. Essentially, either the polluter pays or the clean-up/recovery crew is compensated. As a result, MBIs can have an incentive effect (to encourage a change of behavior), or create a revenue-raising effect.

Will it work for plastic bag marine debris in practical application in developing countries around the world? How much continued aesthetic degradation and marine life mortality is "acceptable" as we get market-based incentives into play? Hard questions to fathom. And certainly the issue is not made any easier when environmental leaders like UNEP are sending mixed signals.