Regional Training on Marine Litter Monitoring: Advancing Data Analysis

Monitoring and assessment are indispensable in identifying marine litter status, trends, and its most critical impacts, and to support development, tracking and evaluation of policies and management interventions. The Regional Action Plan on Marine Litter (RAP MALI) of the Coordinating Body on the Seas of East Asia (COBSEA) recognizes the importance of robust and harmonized monitoring of plastic pollution in the environment in the East Asian Seas. The aim is to improve evidence for effective decision-making at national level and greater data comparability at regional level to address the transboundary issue of marine litter. Effective data collection and management is also needed to track progress toward an anticipated international instrument on plastic pollution and marine litter in the environment. 

The workshop will build capacity of participants to manage, interpret and analyse data to discover litter  hotspots and problematic litter items, inform waste management, policies and interventions, and track their effectiveness.