(Paris) Plastic pollution has reached “all parts of the oceans” and threatens marine biodiversity “from the smallest plankton to the largest whale”, alerted the WWF on Tuesday, calling for a rapid commitment to a treaty on plastics.
Posted at 7:08 p.m.
A few weeks before a UN environment assembly that could launch negotiations on such an agreement, the World Wide Fund for Nature is publishing a voluminous report on the impacts of plastic pollution on the oceans, biodiversity and marine ecosystems. Synthesis of the conclusions of more than 2000 separate scientific studies on these questions.
First observation, this contamination “has reached all parts of the oceans, from the surface to the deep seabed, from the poles to the coasts of the most isolated islands, and is found from the smallest plankton to the largest whale”.
Because between 19 and 23 million tonnes of plastic arrive each year in the waters of the planet, a good part of which ends up at sea, according to estimates.
A growing danger, even if the WWF recognizes a lack of data on the possible repercussions on humans of this presence of products with chemical components.
The products are largely single-use plastics, which more and more countries are banning, but which still constitute more than 60% of marine pollution. They degrade as they stay in the water, becoming smaller and smaller, down to “nanoplastic” of a size less than a micrometer (thousandths of a millimeter).
Saturation
So that even if no more plastic arrived in the ocean, the number of microplastics should double there by 2050. However, according to estimates cited by the WWF, the production of plastic in the world should double by 2040.
Industry representatives, however, believe it is likely that production growth will slow and avoid this doubling.
But for Eirik Lindebjerg, responsible for the plastic file at the WWF, “we are reaching a saturation point for marine ecosystems which poses a threat not only to specific species, but affects the entire ecosystem”.
Beyond the emblematic photos of seals or turtles struggling with plastic bags or debris from fishing nets, the entire food chain is affected.
A 2021 study thus listed 386 species of fish having ingested plastic out of 555 tested.
According to other scientists, examining one of the major commercial fishing species, up to 30% of a sample of cod caught in the North Sea had microplastics in the stomach. Something to appeal to lovers of “fish and chips”.
On the herring side, a study found microplastics in 17% of a sample caught in the Baltic.
Birds are also on display. In the northwest Atlantic, 74% of seabirds examined by one study had eaten plastic. 69% according to another study in Hawaii.
Zero emissions
Eirik Lindebjerg compares the situation to the climate crisis and its “carbon budgets”, the maximum amount of CO2 that can be released into the atmosphere before certain consequences.
“It’s the same with plastic. What we show in this report is that there is a limit to the pollution that our ecosystems can absorb,” continues the expert.
Limit already reached on the microplastic side in several points of the globe points out the WWF, in particular in the Mediterranean, in the Yellow and East China Seas (between China, Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula) and in the Arctic sea ice.
“We must consider the question as that of a finished system that does not absorb plastic and that is why we must move towards zero emissions, zero pollution, as quickly as possible”, insists Eirik Lindebjerg. Because seeking to clean up the oceans is “extremely difficult and expensive” and it is much less costly and effective to act upstream.
WWF therefore calls for the rapid start of talks with a view to drawing up an international agreement on plastics. The subject will be on the menu of a UN meeting on the environment, from February 28 to March 2 in Nairobi.
An agreement which should at least according to the WWF lead to world standards of production and real “recyclability”. “And which could also lead to the disappearance of certain products that we do not need”, wants to hope Eirik Lindebjerg.