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Trade Related Measures in Plastic Rule Governance and China's Participation
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This paper looks at how countries are trying to use trade rules — like restrictions on shipping plastic waste across borders — to tackle the global plastic pollution problem, using China as a key example. While it doesn't directly study health effects, this matters because plastic waste that isn't properly managed often ends up polluting oceans and land, breaking down into microplastics that can enter our food, water, and eventually our bodies. Stronger international trade rules on plastic could be an important tool for reducing this pollution at its source, before it becomes a health hazard.
ABSTRACT This article examines the adequacy and state practice of employing trade‐related measures to mitigate the global plastic pollution. Trade spans the entire lifecycle of plastics, bringing plastic with high economic value and deep integration within global value chains. As a global environmental crisis, plastic pollution necessitates a synergistic approach to international governance. Discipline in plastic trade under the international legal framework not only helps reconcile the friction between trade and the environment, but also addresses the systemic inefficiencies stemming from regulatory fragmentation. With a focus on three key processes: the Plastic Waste Amendments to the Basel Convention, the WTO Dialogue on Plastic Pollution and Environmentally Sustainable Plastics Trade, and the negotiations toward an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, this paper examines the basic paradigms of plastic trade governance and analyzes the deficiencies and geo‐economic obstacles it faces. Given the consideration of global plastic governance's high reliance on state participation, the paper further takes China as a primary case study, analyzing approaches for China to participate in plastic trade governance with the model of foreign‐related rule of law.
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This study analyzed China's marine plastic waste and microplastic pollution governance system, examining policy frameworks across blue economy development, plastics industry reform, and public health awareness, while proposing countermeasures to curb marine pollution intensification.
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Plastic pollution—including tiny microplastics—isn't just an environmental problem, it's a health problem too, but this study finds that the international agreements and organizations meant to tackle plastic waste don't do a great job connecting the dots between the two. In other words, the people negotiating global plastic treaties and the people focused on public health aren't fully coordinating, which means the human health risks of plastic pollution may be getting less attention than they deserve in the rules being written right now. This matters because as global leaders finalize a landmark plastics treaty, closing this gap could mean stronger protections for the food, water, and air you're exposed to every day
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This paper reviews the international laws meant to stop plastic pollution in our oceans and finds they're not strong enough to actually solve the problem. That matters for your health because ocean plastic breaks down into microplastics that end up in seafood, drinking water, and even our bodies—and the researchers argue we need a stronger, legally binding global treaty to fix the gaps that let this pollution continue unchecked.
Research digests by email
When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.