Development Research Group, World Bank, USA.
Environment, Natural Resources and the Blue Economy in West Africa, World Bank, USA.
Sci Total Environ. 2022 Sep 15;839:156319. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.156319. Epub 2022 May 28.
Plastic waste, with an estimated lifetime of centuries, accounts for the major share of marine litter. Each year, thousands of fish, sea birds, sea turtles, and other marine species are killed by ingesting or becoming entangled with plastic debris. Reducing marine plastic pollution is particularly challenging for developing countries owing to the wide dispersal of plastic waste disposal and scarce public cleanup resources. To costeffectively reduce marine pollution, resources should target "hotspot" areas, where large volumes of plastic litter have a high likelihood of ending up in the ocean. Using new public information, this study develops a hotspot targeting strategy for Accra and Lagos, which are major sources of marine plastic pollution in West Africa. The same global information sources can support hotspot analyses for many other coastal cities that generate marine plastic waste. The methodology combines georeferenced household survey data on plastic use, measures of seasonal variation in marine plastic pollution from satellite imagery, and a model of plastic waste transport to the ocean that uses information on topography, seasonal rainfall, drainage to rivers, and river transport to the ocean. For cleanup, the results for West Africa assign the highest locational priority to areas with heavy plastic-waste disposal along river channels or in steeply sloped locations with high rainfall runoff potential near rivers. They assign the highest temporal priority to just before the onset of the first-semester rainy season, when runoff from the first rains transports large volumes of plastic waste that have accumulated during the dry season.
塑料废物的估计使用寿命长达数百年，占海洋垃圾的主要部分。每年，成千上万的鱼类、海鸟、海龟和其他海洋物种因吞食或被塑料碎片缠住而死亡。由于塑料废物处理广泛分散，公共清理资源稀缺，减少海洋塑料污染对发展中国家来说尤其具有挑战性。为了有效地减少海洋污染，资源应针对“热点”地区，这些地区大量的塑料垃圾很有可能最终进入海洋。本研究利用新的公共信息，为西非海洋塑料污染的主要来源阿克拉和拉各斯制定了一个热点目标策略。同样的全球信息来源可以支持许多其他沿海城市的热点分析，这些城市产生海洋塑料废物。该方法结合了关于塑料使用的地理参考家庭调查数据、卫星图像中海洋塑料污染季节性变化的测量值，以及一个将塑料废物输送到海洋的模型，该模型利用地形、季节性降雨、流向河流的排水和河流向海洋的输送信息。对于清理工作，西非的结果将最高的位置优先级分配给沿河道或在坡度较大、靠近河流的地方有大量塑料废物处理的区域，以及在雨季开始前的最高时间优先级，此时第一场雨的径流会输送大量在旱季积累的塑料废物。
