Reducing styrofoam and monitoring, collecting, and classifying plastic waste in marine protected areas are targeted in the Fisheries Action Plan 2020-2030

Reducing styrofoam and monitoring, collecting, and classifying plastic waste in marine protected areas are targeted in the Fisheries Action Plan 2020-2030.

On February 5, 2021, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development approved the Action Plan to manage ocean plastic waste in the fishery sector, period 2020 – 2030.

Notably in the Plan, there is a target to reduce 30% of the use of foam buoys in marine aquaculture by 2025 and 50% by 2030 and specific activities to realize the goal of the National Action Plan on Marine Plastic Waste Management issued by the Prime Minister on December 4, 2019 is that “100% of marine protected areas develop a plan to monitor and organize the collection and classification of plastic waste by 2025”.

GreenHub contributes to the development process and provides comments from the continuous efforts in implementing projects and activities on effective waste management, the Green Bay project – GreenBays implemented 2018-2020 and beach plastic pollution monitoring program along 11 marine protected areas in Vietnam.

Through the GreenBays project, replacing Styrofoam with Cage Aquaculture activities, the source of Styrofoam pollution in Cat Ba Islands and Ha Long Bay through research and piloting of environmentally friendly solutions for the problem of styrofoam waste in floating structures at caged aquaculture areas. Communities in the project area will be trained and supported to implement best waste management and reduction measures.

Marine waste monitoring program in 11 marine protected areas, building capacity for partners to evaluate and implement a plastic waste monitoring program to identify the top 10 polluting plastic waste and from there the marine protected areas makes recommendations to integrate it into the effective management of their places. The program continues to be implemented with the companionship of GreenHub, IUCN and WWF to jointly support the implementation of the Action Plan to reduce plastic waste in the Fishery Sector till 2025.

From the data of the survey and assessment of waste pollution leaking at the beach and the Marine Protected Area, the top 5 most found plastic waste always have foam and net fishing gear. We call for the companionship of organizations and research institutes to accompany the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development in implementing the Action Plan.