Summary of project document

There are several physical models and methodologies to address land-based sources of marine pollution, but there is no standardised tool to develop an appropriate inventory of sources of plastics entering the aquatic environments. To address this, the project will develop a practical and useful toolkit to identify and quantify the sources of plastic pollutants entering into the aquatic environment; to support countries, river basin organisations and coastal management authorities to develop science-based action programmes to reduce plastic pollution. The application of the toolkit will allow the development of source-inventories and list of hotspots, so that control bodies can develop strategies to address water plastic pollution and identify priority action. All sources of water plastic pollution (both land-based and water-based) will be considered, and scientists, waste management experts/practitioners, and data management experts will all participate in the toolkit development. Once the toolkit development is complete, it will be applied in a selected pilot country -Kenya-, and the results and experiences will be fed back to the modification and reinforcement of the toolkit. This project is based on the expertise developed by the UNEP International Environment Technology Centre (IETC) and the work of UNEP Marine Litter Programme in Ecosystems Division and the Global Environment Monitoring System (GEMS) in Science Division. Furthermore, the project is based on the expertise and experiences of the water and marine programmes of the European Commission Directorate-General for the Environment. The project will be closely tied with the UNEP’s Medium-term strategy (MTS) 2022-2025, particularly under Outcomes 3B and 3C, and will also be part of UNEP’s One Plastic Initiative.