A UN reports highlights the threat plastics impose of the species of the Asia-Pacific region
When plastics were invented, they were consumed as a more convenient alternative to the traditional materials being used at the time. Convenience and durability were the two key factors that surged its popularity. However, by 1970s, the scientific community had discovered that plastics can prove to be disastrous.
Since 1970s it has taken a couple of decades for the alarm of the havoc plastics create to reach the general public. The issue being that for the most part the material is produced for single use. A single plastic product takes around four hundred years to degrade and its degradation doesn’t mean that it stops existing. It just means that it converts to micro-plastics and more readily enter our food chain.
A latest UN report on the region of Asia-Pacific highlights the menace of plastics in nature. Be it from endangered freshwater dolphins drowned by discarded fishing nets to elephants scavenging through rubbish or any migratory species. They all are among the most vulnerable to plastic pollution.
Micro-plastics have infiltrated even the most remote and seemingly pristine areas of the planet, to the extent that tiny fragments have been discovered inside fish in the deepest recesses of the ocean and peppering Arctic sea ice.
The paper by the UN’s Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) focused on the impacts of plastic on freshwater species in rivers and on land animals and birds, which researchers said were often overlooked victims of humanity’s expanding trash crisis. It added that because these creatures encounter different environments including industrialised and polluted areas, they are likely at risk of higher exposure to plastics and associated contaminants.
Researchers cited that approximately 80 per cent of the plastic material that ends up in the oceans originates on land with rivers thought to play a key role in carrying debris out to sea.
This report has been published just a couple of days ahead of International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Global Conservation Congress, which starts tomorrow, and will include a motion calling for an end to marine plastic pollution by 2030.
“Actions to address this global issue have fallen far short of what is needed,” said CMS Executive Secretary Amy Fraenkel. “The focus has thus far been on clean up in our oceans, but that is already too late in the process. We need to focus on solutions and prevention of plastic pollution upstream.”
The UN report specifically highlights two regions, the Ganges and Mekong river basins which together contribute an estimated 200,000 tons of plastic pollution to the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean every year.
Discarded fishing gear were found to be major threats. Dolphins have known to become entangled and trapped under water by old nets, with endangered Irrawaddy Dolphins and Ganges River Dolphins at particular risk.
The report also pointed out that migratory seabirds, such as Black-footed Albatrosses and Laysan Albatrosses, may not be able to tell plastic from prey when flying over the ocean and can accidentally eat floating debris. This means the plastic could build up in their guts or be passed on to their chicks when they regurgitate food for them, it said.
On land, Asian Elephants had also been observed scavenging on rubbish dumps in Sri Lanka and eating plastic in Thailand, the report noted. The report stressed that species in Asia-Pacific face a multitude of threats, including habitat loss, overfishing, industrial pollution and climate change.
“Even if plastic pollution is not the most significant of these stressors, it can add an additional stress to already vulnerable populations,” it said.
It called for strategies to prevent plastic being dumped in the environment, reducing waste through better design and recycling, as well as greater efforts to understand the effects of this pollution on migratory species.
Originally published at https://pk.mashable.com on September 2, 2021.
