Pakistan and India are among six countries in South Asia facilitating the transport of pollution like solid waste including plastics, industrial effluents, domestic wastewater, and microplastics across borders through 20 major rivers, a new World Bank report says.
The report, ‘Waves of Plastic: A Snapshot of Marine Plastic Pollution in South Asia,’ highlights two major transboundary river basins, the Ganges-Brahmaputra Meghna (GBM, that includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, and Nepal) and the Indus River basin (including Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan) due to their high leakage rates.
Sixty-eight percent of Afghanistan’s plastic leakage, 66 percent of Pakistan’s leakage, and 1.5 percent of India’s leakage flows into the Indus. “Pakistan has the lowest plastic waste leakage rate in South Asia; Sri Lanka has the highest plastic waste leakage rate,” the report said on differences and similarities along the plastic value chain in South Asian countries.
While Bhutan and Nepal are the only land-locked countries in South Asia, plastic waste still reaches the ocean via their rivers while India and the Maldives have higher collection rates compared to other South Asian countries, the report added.
The more populous nations (Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan) have significantly lower per person leakage rates than the other countries in the region given their comparatively higher recycling rates (37 percent for Bangladesh, 40.6 percent for India, and 19.2 percent for Pakistan).
“National policies and their effective implementation are fundamental to reducing plastic waste flowing into rivers and seas and, thus, preventing marine plastic pollution,” the World Bank said. “While national ministries (usually the environment ministries) are in charge of approving such policies, their implementation is dependent on national rules as well as state/provincial and local government institutions.” Implementation is also contingent on the availability of vital infrastructure and logistical support, which necessitates strong leadership and institutions. For this sector, in particular, the private and informal sectors play important roles in policy implementation, and without them, policy success would be restricted, the World Bank said. Policies implemented and enforced at the sub-national or city level are usually more efficient due to local mandates in terms of implementation and enforcement of plastic policies.
An estimated 171 trillion plastic particles were afloat in the oceans by 2019, according to peer-reviewed research led by the 5 Gyres Institute, a US organization that campaigns to reduce plastic pollution. Plastics entering the world’s oceans have surged by an “unprecedented” amount since 2005 and could nearly triple by 2040 if no further action is taken, the institute said in a report last year. Marine plastic pollution could rise 2.6 fold by 2040 if legally binding global policies are not introduced, it predicted. The study looked at surface-level plastic pollution data from 11,777 ocean stations in six major marine regions covering the period from 1979 to 2019. Some 390 million tons of plastic were produced worldwide in 2021, data from the Plastics Europe plastics producer association showed, up from 1.7 million tons in 1950. Although the recycling rate has increased in the last few years, less than 10 percent of plastic waste is recycled worldwide.