This report highlights the commonalities and disagreements between the reporting by Member States (MS) to the Water Framework Directive (WFD) and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) on the standards for Biological Quality elements in coastal waters, and the methodological standards...

Across Africa, rising populations and increased socioeconomic activity in coastal areas are resulting in increasing marine pollution. Rather than expand their Blue Economies, countries need to combat pollution in coastal and marine waters to mitigate the threats posed to biodiversity, ecosystem...

Europe's marine environment faces increasing demands from maritime sectors and this briefing addresses the often-conflicting demands on the marine space. This briefing highlights the need for informed planning to meet climate goals and safeguard marine biodiversity.

This new CORDIS Results Pack presents 12 EU-funded Horizon research projects that are helping to reduce the impact of marine litter through prevention, elimination, mitigation and monitoring, from source to sea. The Pack showcases their potential for exploitation, scale-up, replication and...

This new CORDIS Results Pack presents 12 EU-funded Horizon research projects that are helping to reduce the impact of marine litter through prevention, elimination, mitigation and monitoring, from source to sea. The Pack showcases their potential for exploitation, scale-up, replication and...

This new CORDIS Results Pack presents 12 EU-funded Horizon research projects that are helping to reduce the impact of marine litter through prevention, elimination, mitigation and monitoring, from source to sea. The Pack showcases their potential for exploitation, scale-up, replication and...

This document reports the results of a survey promoted by the Technical Expert Group (TEG) on Data for MSP to gather information on how the national MSP processes have taken into account the national MSFD implementation and, specifically, the dataset collected and produced under MSFD. The...

The present study focuses on a particular group of actors along the plastics collection and recycling value chain--informal waste workers (IWWs)--on whom limited information has been collected at the country level. Specifically, the study examines two questions: (i) what is the profile and...

Since net zero targets have become a keystone of climate policy, more thought is being given to actively removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while continuing to drastically reduce emissions. The ocean plays a major role in regulating the global climate by absorbing a large proportion of...

Different policy instruments have been used to reduce the production and consumption of plastic products, and increase recycling. In particular, several countries have imposed either a ban or a tax on single-use plastic packaging, motivated by their contribution to marine plastic pollution....

The new EU MSFD Guidance on Monitoring Marine Litter in the European Seas provides protocols for monitoring of marine litter based on research developments and Member States efforts to increase the comparability of data and assessments. This update, from the previous version published 2013,...

The Government of Indonesia's (GoI) National Plan of Action on Marine Plastic Debris (NPOA-MPD 2017-2025) outlines the ambitious objective of reducing marine plastic debris by seventy percent by 2025. Abandoned, Lost and Discarded Fishing Gear (ALDFG) is a major component of sea-based sources of...

Plastic pollution is a worldwide environmental challenge. In coastal West Africa, about 80 percent of plastic waste is mismanaged, posing escalating challenges to people, the economy, and the coastal and marine environment. This Synthesis Paper was prepared to inform decision-makers from the...

The paper presents, with examples, the steps through which scientific cooperation has laid the foundations for the adoption of measures of great importance for a sustainable development that ensures a sustainable future for future generations and a sustainable life based on security. "The...

In 2008, the company Airbnb started its activity becoming the most representative tourism accommodation company from the sharing economy. Nowadays, it has more than 6.500.000 registered listings around the world. Previous literature examines hedonic models where Airbnb's prices are explained in...

The Transocean Deepwater Horizon, an offshore mobile drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico's Macondo area, suffered a massive blowout owing to the loss of an exploratory well on the evening of April 20, 2010. The entire rig collapsed within few days, killing 11 oil rig workers, and sank for nearly...

In 2008, the company Airbnb started its activity becoming the most representative tourism accommodation company from the sharing economy. Nowadays, it has more than 6.500.000 registered listings around the world. Previous literature examines hedonic models where Airbnb’s prices are explained...

Marine litter pollution is a global environmental problem, affecting all oceans and with substantial impacts on marine ecosystem services, maritime economic activity, public health, and aesthetics. To develop socially acceptable policies to foster behavioral change, it is necessary to understand...

Marine plastic pollution is threatening the potential of the blue economy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Recognizing the urgent need to address this problem, the governments of Morocco and Tunisia decided to partner with the World Bank to address marine plastic pollution by...

While economic and social indicators in many Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries have improved over the past three decades, the region's blue natural assets-clean air, healthy seas, and coastlines-have degraded virtually everywhere. Air pollution levels in the region's cities are among...

The Niger Delta region is the oil producing area of Nigeria, which consist of highly diverse ecosystems that is supportive of numerous species of terrestrial and aquatic fauna and flora. This region is the largest wetland in Africa and it is among the ten most important wetlands and marine...

Plastic pollution has now become the most urgent issue harming the marine environment, not only in developing countries where waste management infrastructure is insufficient, but also in the world’s oceans as a whole, because macro-plastic items degrade slowly and produce micro-plastic. The...

This study explores possible futures of the mining industry through numerical analysis of a conceptual mineral extraction problem with two resource stocks - terrestrial and marine. The model is inspired by the manganese mining industry. We consider four model scenarios. The first two consider a...

This paper investigates the national influences on negotiations that are taking place during the IMO’s Marine Environmental Protection Committee (MEPC). We analyze a sample of 3049 documents submitted prior to 28 MEPC meetings between 2002 and 2019 to evaluate the profile of countries that are...

This study has investigated the photochemical degradation of polychlorinated dibenzo- p -dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDEs) and some organochlorine pesticides, such as hexachlorobenzene (HCB) or...

Climate change is projected to cause brownification of some coastal seas due to increased runoff of terrestrially derived organic matter. We carried out a mesocosm experiment (15 d) to test the effect of this on the planktonic ecosystem. The experiment was set up in 2.2 m 3 bags using four...

Coastal eutrophication is a major issue worldwide, also affecting the Baltic Sea and its coastal waters. Coastal eutrophication management requires further understanding of the complex interlinkages between pressures (and their drivers), and states, impacts and management responses in the...

Marine plastic pollution is a global issue that has recently attracted the attention of the authorities, with new environmental goals because of calamitous consequences of the global economy, biodiversity, human health, and the climate. This issue harms marine organisms, ecological processes,...

The Mediterranean Sea is recognized as one of the most polluted areas by floating plastics. During the Tara Mediterranean expedition, an extensive sampling of plastic debris was carried out in seven ecoregions, from Gibraltar to Lebanon. The abundance, size, surface, circularity and mass of...

Rapid and efficient clean-up of viscous crude oil spills is still a global challenge due to its high viscous and poor flowability at room temperature. The hydrophobic/oleophilic absorbents with three-dimensional porous structure have been considered as a promising candidate to handle oil spills....

This study presents a novel life cycle assessment-based framework for low-impact oil spill response waste (OSRW) management. The framework consists of design of experiment, life cycle assessment (LCA), multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), operational cost analysis, and generation of...

Pharmaceuticals are emerging pollutants of concern with a range of adverse consequences for organisms and ecosystems. Their ubiquitous presence in freshwater and estuarine systems has been well documented, but less is known about their prevalence in open ocean, or about their uptake by benthic...

COVID-19 lockdown brought to a drastic reduction of anthropic impacts on the environment worldwide, including the marine-coastal system. Earth-Observation (EO) data have the potential to monitor and diagnose the effects of the lockdown in terms of water quality. Here we connect the dots among...

Purpose - Japan's decision to release nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean in 2023 has sparked strong opposition at home and abroad. In this study, Graph Model for Conflict Resolution (GMCR) method is adopted to analyze the conflict problem, and reasonable equilibrium solutions are given to...

Purpose: This study aims to explore the risk level of pufferfish and lionfish by comparing them among Turkish marines. In addition, this study focuses on comparing pufferfish with lionfish to determine which one is more dangerous for marine economics in Türkiye. Design/methodology/approach:...

We explore whether providing ocean acidification (OA) information affects consumers’ preferences for seafood products in a middle-income country in the southern hemisphere. Seafood attributes include shell size and appearance, meat color, texture, taste, nutritional composition, product...

We live in the plastic age (the "plasticene"), producing over 300 million tonnes (mt) of plastic every year globally, 5–15 mt of which flow into already polluted oceans. Plastic remains a key material in the global economy, but low rates of collection, reuse and recycling, emissions of...