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Lessons Learned in Public Sector Capacity Building to Tackle Marine Litter
Summary
This paper reviewed lessons learned from UNEP and GPML online courses designed to build public sector capacity for addressing marine litter, finding that massive open online courses are effective tools for disseminating knowledge and empowering stakeholders to implement sustainable marine litter solutions. The courses were evaluated for their role in enabling countries to overcome governance challenges and achieve long-term sustainability goals for ocean plastic pollution.
Marine litter represents a critical environmental challenge that reflects systemic unsustainability. It calls for a reexamination of social structures, resource management, materials life cycles, consumption patterns, waste production, and strategies to manage debris (Scrich et al., 2024). With far-reaching socioeconomic and ecological impacts that threaten human health, coastal livelihoods, and marine biodiversity (GESAMP, 2015, 2020), nations must prioritize marine litter mitigation (Lau et al., 2020)—an imperative reinforced by the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021–2030). In response, courses such as those among the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offered by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Global Partnership on Plastic Pollution and Marine Litter (GPML) have become vital tools for effective capacity building and knowledge sharing. They empower stakeholders to implement sustainable solutions and provide a path for overcoming global challenges and achieving long-term sustainability (IOC-UNESCO, 2020).