OSPAR discusses marine litter in Edinburgh

OSPAR’s marine litter group (ICG-ML) met last week in Edinburgh, at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. The meeting was attended by delegates, representing 12 Contracting Parties and four Observers Organisations. The OSPAR Secretariat was represented by Philip Stamp, Deputy Secretary responsible for the EIHA Committee, and Pedro Sepúlveda, the current Marine Litter Regional Action Plan Project Coordinator.

During the very busy three day agenda, discussions included issues such as the review of progress against objectives of the OSPAR North-East Atlantic Environment Strategy (NEAES) 2010-2020, proposing contributions towards the new NEAES 2020-2030, ways for ICG-ML to contribute towards OSPAR's next assessment of the state of the North-East Atlantic - the Quality Status Report 2023, new data analysis methods developed by OSPAR and TGML, the setup of thresholds values and power/reduction analysis for beach litter, the development of the OSPAR candidate indicator on plastic particles in turtle stomachs and finally a discussion on the progress on fulfilling the commitments in OSPAR’s Marine Litter Regional Action Plan.