The Twenty-fifth Intergovernmental Meeting (IGM 25) of the Coordinating Body on the Seas of East Asia (COBSEA) adopted Regional Guidance on Harmonized National Marine Litter Monitoring Programmes to strengthen monitoring in the region and promote data comparability for collective action.
Monitoring and assessment are indispensable in identifying marine litter status, trends, and its most critical impacts, and to support development, tracking and evaluation of policy and management interventions. The COBSEA Regional Action Plan on Marine Litter (RAP MALI) recognizes that the absence of adequate science-based monitoring and assessment programmes is a significant barrier to addressing marine litter.
The COBSEA Regional Guidance on Harmonized Monitoring provides practical guidance to address monitoring needs and capacities in the region and apply global guidelines on monitoring methodologies. Regional Guidance builds on an inventory of existing monitoring efforts and capacities in COBSEA participating countries and provides targeted recommendations for monitoring methods, data standards and core objectives to strengthen national monitoring programmes. Recommendations are both regionally appropriate and in line with globally established guidelines, methods, and quality standards, in line with the Guidelines by the Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection (GESAMP).
The Regional Guidance provides the foundation for further technical assistance and training on marine litter monitoring for national baselines on marine litter by COBSEA and CSIRO in 2022.
The Regional Guidance document was developed by COBSEA and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) with funding from the SEA circular project, implemented jointly with by the UNEP Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific and COBSEA, with support from the Government of Sweden. SEA circular contributes to the achievement of the RAP MALI.
