International laws to stop plastic pollution from fishing vessels

International laws to stop plastic pollution from fishing vessels

Subject : Environment

Section: Pollution

Context:

• Ocean plastic pollution was a focus at the recent United Nations oceans conference, which issued a declaration in support of an earlier decision by the UN Environment Assembly to start negotiations for a global plastics treaty.
• An estimated half of ocean plastic pollution comes from some 4.5 million fishing vessels operating in national and international waters.
• Plastic waste from fishing vessels includes lost and deliberately abandoned fishing gear such as nets, pots, floats, crates and fish aggregation devices (FAD).
• Plastics have been found in the deepest part of the ocean in the Mariana Trench and in remote regions such as Henderson Island in the Pitcairn group.
• Lost or abandoned fishing gear can result in “ghost fishing” where nets, FADs and other gear continue to “fish” for decades.
• Other impacts of ocean plastic pollution include entanglement, ingestion, transfer of invasive species and toxins, navigational hazards and beach fouling.

Global rules on plastic pollution from fishing vessels

• Two principal regimes have been developed under the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).
• One is the London dumping regime, which regulates the deliberate dumping of plastic waste at sea from vessels and platforms.
  • Under this, plastic waste including fishing nets and FADs must not be dumped or discarded deliberately by any vessel in all maritime zones outside the internal waters of states.
  • Although there is an exception for the disposal of material incidental to the “normal” operation of vessels, it cannot be argued this includes deliberate disposal of plastic waste, given the harm it causes to marine ecosystems.
• The other is the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL), which regulates both deliberate and accidental discharge of plastics from vessels.
  • While the London regime does not apply to accidental loss of fishing gear, MARPOL does by prohibiting the discharge into the sea of all plastics, including nets, FADs and other fishing gear, both deliberate and accidental.
  • There is, however, an important loophole: The prohibition does not apply to fishing vessels where “all reasonable precautions have been taken to prevent such loss” or where the discharge of fishing gear is necessary for the protection of the environment.
• Apart from these, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), which manages fisheries in the Southern Ocean, bans the use of plastic packaging bands on most vessels.

Problems with these rules

• The problem with these rules is lack of enforcement. It is hard to monitor and enforce the prohibition on plastic pollution from vessels on the high seas.
• Also, there are insufficient incentives to persuade vessels to retrieve abandoned gear they come across while fishing.