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Presented at the Global Congress on ICM: Lessons Learned to Address New Challenges (MEDCOAST 2013)

By: Joana M. Veiga, Thomas K. Doyle, Bonny Hartley, Richard Thompson, Peter Kershaw, Thomie Vlachogianni, Iro Alampei, Demetra Orthodoxou, Xenia I. Loizidou, Matthias Mossbauer and Luigi Alcaro

Abstract

Marine Litter – any human-made item that accidently or purposely reaches the coastal or marine environment – but in particular its plastic fraction, is now globally recognised as an emerging issue of concern, that leads to major economic costs to maritime and coastal sectors, ecologic impacts and possibly other not yet fully-understood risks. Marine litter originates from land and sea-based sources, at different levels of the life-cycle of the item. Given the cross-sectorial nature of this issue and the fact that the way we produce and manage waste reflects our social and economic paradigms, marine litter is a complex problem, where responsibilities are often unclear and the burden of costs unequally divided.

In the last few years, marine litter has received major attention from the European Commission: it represents one of the 11 descriptors within the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and several funding schemes have been made available to improve the understanding of associated processes and implications but also to promote and facilitate the coordination of efforts of its Member States towards effective solutions.

MARLISCO – Marine Litter in Europe’s Seas: Social Awareness and Co-responsibility is a FP7 – Science in Society project (2012-2015) that seeks to raise societal awareness, trigger co-responsibility across the different sectors and facilitate dialogue between the different players on both the problems and the potential solutions regarding marine litter.

MARLISCO will provide a series of mechanisms to engage and empower key stakeholders and implement awareness activities which will be tailored appropriately to the targeting sector. This will be achieved by organising activities across 15 European countries, including national forums in 12 of them, involving industry sectors, scientists and the public; a European video contest for school students; educational activities and tools targeting the younger generation; and exhibitions to raise awareness among the wider public. MARLISCO will make use of innovative multimedia approaches to reach the widest possible audience, in the most effective manner. The project will develop and evaluate approaches that can be used to address the problems associated with marine litter and which can also be applied more widely to other societal challenges where there are substantial benefits to be achieved through better integration among researchers, stakeholders and society.

Full paper available upon request.