Troubled waters – Where is the bridge? Confronting marine plastic pollution from international watercourses

• Date: 01 November 2018
• Published date: 01 November 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/reel.12257

SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE

Troubled waters –Where is the bridge? Confronting marine

plastic pollution from international watercourses

Linda Finska

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Julie Gjørtz Howden

Correspondence

Email: linda.finska@uit.no A considerable volume of marine plastic pollution derives from watercourses, and

many of the world's largest and most heavily polluted watercourses are interna-

tional. In spite of the clear factual link between the utilization and protection of

international watercourses and marine plastic pollution there is hardly any inter-

action between the legal sub‐fields of international water law and marine environ-

mental law. This lack of interaction also reflects the absence of a global treaty, or

even a shared global understanding, of the environmental threat from plastic pollu-

tion and the universal responsibility this generates also for landlocked States. This

article investigates the possibilities for more integrated measures to prevent pollu-

tion of international watercourses and oceans, and argues that regimes within inter-

national water law and marine environmental law must cooperate to create

awareness of the plastic pollution risk from watercourses and take steps to harmo-

nize their legal rules and policies to contribute to the control and mitigation of mar-

ine plastic pollution. Regional coordination, such as improved cooperation between

the regional seas organizations and river basin organizations, could provide a tool to

better address transboundary sources of plastic. Potentially, such developments

could be adopted to control marine plastic pollution from the most heavily polluted

international watercourses.

1

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INTRODUCTION

Riverine inputs of plastics are a major threat to the marine environ-

ment, according to recent studies.

1

It is characteristic for marine

plastic pollution

2

that the problem starts on land, mostly due to inad-

equate waste management. Plastics are transported via rivers that

often cross several boundaries and flow into the marine environment

of coastal States. Finally, plastics end up further out in the oceans

due to currents and winds, or wash up on beaches that may be

located far from where the plastics originated. The nature of the

problem signifies that no one regime exists in international law that

could regulate all aspects of it. More and more complex cooperation

is needed between different regimes to construct an effective legal

response and permanently prevent plastics polluting the marine

environment. In this article, we focus on the interaction between

marine environmental law and international water law in dealing with

marine plastic pollution. The purpose is to draw attention to the

physical and legal linkages between plastics, watercourses and

oceans by mapping out and discussing the current legal frameworks

and the lack of clear cooperative initiatives.

No binding or non‐binding legal instrument explicitly regulates

the prevention of marine plastic pollution on a global level. Nonethe-

less, multiple instruments are applicable to it more generally. We use

the most recent scientific knowledge on riverine inputs of plastics as

a starting point and as a source of inspiration to construct the legal

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1

See C Schmidt, T Krauth and S Wagner, ‘Export of Plastic Debris by Rivers into the Sea’

(2017) 51 Environmental Science & Technology 12246; LCM Lebreton et al, ‘River Plastic

Emissions to the World's Oceans’(2017) 8 Nature Communications 1.

2

In this article, we use ‘marine plastic pollution’when referring to plastics that end up in

the oceans, ‘riverine inputs of plastics’when referring to plastics that reach the oceans via

rivers, and ‘plastic’or ‘plastics’when referring to the material itself. Marine plastic pollution

falls under the more general categories of ‘litter’and ‘pollution’. We use these expressions

only when they are referred to in other sources and when encompassing plastics.

DOI: 10.1111/reel.12257

RECIEL. 2018;27:245–253. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/reel

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