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Designing an International Instrument for Combating Marine Plastic Pollution
Summary
This legal analysis examines how an international treaty to address marine plastic pollution should be designed, drawing comparisons to the Montreal Protocol and the Paris Agreement. The author argues that any successful instrument must address the full lifecycle of plastics and account for the different economic and political contexts across nations.
Marine plastic pollution is a rapidly increasing issue of serious global concern. To combat this issue, an immediate global response addressing the full lifecycle of plastic products is essential. Divergent views are presented as to how an international instrument tackling the issue should be designed. Some suggest, for example, that the instrument should be modelled after the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, whereas others propose that the Paris Agreement on climate change is the appropriate model. An important lesson learned from past experience is that the success or failure of environmental regimes is dependent on contextual factors. This paper considers how the basic structure of an instrument tackling marine plastic pollution may be designed, firstly by presenting several examples of factors to be examined and comparing the issue of marine plastic pollution with other major environmental issues of our time, and secondly by focusing its attention on yet another important factor, namely, international trade.