Let Oceans breathe and people live a better life

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 On 18 June 2019, a lab session at the European Development Days discussed the nexus between cleaning up the oceans and reducing inequalities.

Over 3 billion people on our planet depend on marine and coastal resources for their livelihoods, but the health of the world’s oceans is under threat. An estimated 8 million tonnes of plastic waste and microplastics are discharged annually, threatening ecosystems, people and communities. Clean oceans are however crucial for sustainable development and to address economic inequalitie and improve people's health.

The session was organised by the European Investment Bank (EIB) together with the Agence française de développement (AFD), KfW Development Bank, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). Speakers from these organisations explored how they each contribute to healthy oceans and what they see as the main challenges and opportunities for effective collaboration and partnership.

The session was moderated by UNEP expert, Ms Christine Haffner-Sifakis, who explained that the main focus would be on tackling plastic pollution, an urgent issue at the top of the global agenda. The discussions would build on commitments made at the recent United Nations Environment Assembly Ministerial Meeting of March 2019 (UNEA 4) and the various pledges made at the 2018 Our Oceans Conference in Bali, in particular on the Clean Oceans Initiative by the EIB, KfW and ADF.

The speakers in the panel were (in order of opening remarks): Ms Tatjana Hema, Deputy Coordinator of the Mediterranean Action Plan under the Barcelona Convention; Mr Richard Amor, Head of Unit at the European Investment Bank (EIB); Klaus Gihr, Head of Division at KfW; Gilles Kleitz, Director at AFD; and Françoise Jacob, UNOPS’ Representative to the EU institutions.

Outcomes: At the end of the session, there was overall agreement that several approaches should be pursued at the same time to address the problem of marine plastic pollution.

A first level of action should be directed at policies and at keeping pressure on institutions and parliaments at international, European and national level to frame the urgency for action.

In addition, we need to continue to help do the cleaning up on the ground in a sustainable manner at the source, and equip local communities, cities and countries with basic instruments to avoid these tons of plastic ending in the seas; this includes a circular economy.

On a third level, financing for innovation and new technologies is considered key to help bring to scale nature-based solutions and social based solutions. In this context it is important to learn from small initiatives on the ground and provide them better access to funding to allow them to come to scale. There are many good experiences from regional cooperation frameworks like the Mediterranean Action Plan and SWITCH programmes to learn from and build upon. It was also considered important to ensure that after investment the work is sustained in the same way. 

At a fourth level, all agreed that a key way to succeed was by working together, that we need enhanced global cooperation and coordination.

There was also a common understanding that financial institutions need to work out different financial models and that we should consider a return on investment in a very ecosystem friendly way, so not just financial but also a return for the health of the ocean and for the communities that depend on them and are often most vulnerable, such as local fishermen. Finally, as one speaker put it, we should change our consumption patterns and eat less fish.

For a synopsis of the discussions please see here: https://www.eudevdays.eu/community/sessions/2354/let-oceans-breathe-and-people-live-a-better-life

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Detailed report on the meeting:

Ms Tatjana Hema, Deputy Coordinator of the Mediterranean Action Plan presented her views on the topic from the experience of the Mediterranean Action Plan (MAP) under the Barcelona Convention. This programme of action is administered by UNEP and promotes environmental development in the Mediterranean with as main focus the protection of the coastal and marine environment.

Ms Hema highlighted that inequalities are still very present in the region, but some are also global ones. The 22 parties to the Barcelona Convention and the European Union, have developed a Mediterranean strategy for sustainable development, and they have produced a report on the state of the environment and development in the Mediterranean. She highlighted some of the outcomes related to the inequalities. On the positive, the Mediterranean has for instance improved on access to sanitation and drinking water, and on education and gender parity. The region is committed to make steps forward and to try to bridge and fill inequalities that are persisting. These inequalities relate to unequal exposure to environmental risks, different income and revenues distribution; contrasting socio economic development; the fact that the law enforcement mechanism is not effective in the same way in all parts of the Mediterranean; unequal opportunities and capacity of the countries for innovation and exchange of technology, and a few others.

She explained that the MAP system has a large scope of work, apart from following sustainable development trends and bringing emerging issues to the attention of parties, they also have a system in place with measures that are mostly legally binding.

She gave the example of what they have done in relation to the issue of plastic pollution and marine litter. The Mediterranean was the first region in the world to commit to legally binding measures on marine litter. They are currently looking into advancing those measures in view of addressing also measures related to microplastics, such as waste water treatment and other sources of pollution, including from the cosmetic sector. The Parties to the Barcelona Convention are committed to reduce beach litter by 20 percent by 2024 and reduce marine litter by 2030.

In this context, the MAP has some good experience on bridging with the financial institutions. For instance, the MAP and the EIB collaboration have led to the establishment of Mediterranean Hot Spots Investment Programme  (MeHSIP) that supported a number of investments in the Mediterranean region to combat pollution from land based sources, in particular in the field of waste water treatment plant construction and this had led to the establishment of Horizon 2020 on de-polluting the Mediterranean by 2020. MAP is also working with the Union for the Mediterranean secretariat, the EIB and other banks on how to promote environmental investment in the Mediterranean. Ms Hema considered that we should learn from these existing experiences and maintain the momentum.

Richard Amor, Head of Unit at the European Investment Bank (EIB), underscored the need to address the issue of plastic pollution and marine litter. This topic has come forward from the bottom up and is very important for many Europeans.

In cooperation with KfW, AFD from France, the EIB have set up the Clean Oceans Intitiative end of 2018, a common European solution as part of the global solution for this issue. This initiative will be supporting projects that have the effect of reducing pollution in the ocean, primarily focusing on plastics. These projects are outside of the EU, and mainly in Africa and Asia where main polluting rivers are situated.

The idea is to focus on real tangible projects and initiatives that will have an impact for the people who are living in these areas that have been significantly impacted by pollution. Such projects relate for instance to solid waste management projects, helping with recycling, with waste collection, waste water, and try to minimize microplastics from getting into the rivers and the seas. Action includes providing technical assistance and helping governments put in place the right regulatory regimes to support the expansion of the waste management sector. It is also trying to support innovative companies, such as those who will produce the next big biodegradable plastics or next bio algues that can break down the plastic that is existing already in the oceans. Basically, it is trying to find and support those winners that are going to support and provide the solutions that will help us all.

Since it started, the Clean Oceans Initiative has already identified two big challenges:

1. It is ‘free’ to throw your rubbish into the sea, there are no costs to throwing away rubbish. The challenge is to persuade people and governments that it is the right thing to do to invest in the collection, recycling and re-use of waste, and that this should be a priority for the countries.
2. We also know that it’s the micro entrepreneurs, the small businesses, the innovators on the ground who are going to try to find the clever solutions for this issue, so we need to also help them by supporting governments to make sure that the regulatory regimes in their countries is the right ecosystem to produce these innovative companies in Africa or Asia who are going to find the solution.

Klaus Gihr, Head of Division at KfW underlined the importance following Bali to have 3 big European financing institutions working together on this issue. The fact of having the issue on the agenda of development banks gives a strong signal. In fact, in the aftermath of Bali, they have received many requests for information, indicating that the private sector and NGOs and a number of governments have realised that they need to so something. Companies have started to realize that the waste economy may be something where you can make money when governments are convinced and have convinced their people that they need to address the issue. He observed some progress but it remains a difficult battle, he said. He gave an example: they have been financing storm water in an Indian city where the Mayor wanted to increase the resilience of the city but did not consider that plastic was a big issue. KfW needed to convince the Mayor that when we do something about storm water improvement you cannot just increase the influx of plastic into the open sea. They needed to discuss with the municipalities on how to get plastics out of the oceans.

Mr Gihr noted that the the subject of the session was broader – ‘leaving no one behind and let oceans breathe’ - so not only about plastics. More generally we need to protect the oceans and those who are living and making their living from the oceans. In this context they have created the Blue Action fund with which they aim at increasing coastal protection while also addressing or improving the livelihood of fishermen, who are often the most destitute of society in many countries. The strategy includes reducing the influx of plastic and making sure that the oceans are better protected and livelihood of fishermen are being addressed.

Gilles Kleitz, Director at AFD underlined the relative recent importance given to ocean protection by development agencies and indicated what the Ocean portfolio of his agency comprises. In the past it was a sort of marginal subject in development sector, and he pays tribute to the important work that has been done by civil society and especially the conservation world in the 80s and 90s to progressively push development agencies (especially bilateral banks) towards more commitments into protecting and more wisely using the Ocean. At AFD the Ocean agenda came together progressively over the last 10 years.

The ocean portfolio of AFD is composed of several complementary objectives in support of a much stronger Ocean affirmative agenda. Funding activities cover various areas Mr Kleitz explained, including :

1. Marine and coastal protected areas (resilience to climate change, key ecosystems such as mangroves and coral reefs), and
2. The sustainable use of and support for sound scientific based management of resources at national and sometimes local community level; and
3. Reducing the pressure such as from plastic. He admitted that this is a difficult one because it is multifactorial and is sometimes complex such as depolluting the bay of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, where you have to bring all actors together to commit to a similar objective (industry, the sewage, maritime activities and so);
4. Developing global partnerships, such as the Clean Oceans Initiative, the Blue Action Fund and other focusing on protecting key ecosystems
5. Addressing also the issue of climate resilience:  the 3 billion people who depend on the oceans for their livelihoods are not only usually economically marginal but also well impacted by climate change first, this is particularly the case in places such as in the Pacific Ocean and in the West Indian Ocean.

Mr Kleitz concluded that while the agenda for oceans in development agencies is getting more important, the means to address the problems of pollution, of over use of fishes, of ecosystem degradation etc.  is hardly at scale at the moment.

Francoise Jacob, UNOPS’ Representative to the EU institutions, talked about increasing pressure on all of us. UNOPS has people on the ground, and in the case of the Ocean agenda they do a lot of waste management in coastal areas, related to sewage, plastic pollution, municipal waste and drainage - all things nobody really wants to talk about or be directly involved in, she said. It is not so complicated to do waste management, she observed, but it is not happening fast enough and is not yet considered a priority. Although there is growing political commitment in the world, with new conventions and international agreements, at the level of the coastal areas the awareness is sometimes non-existant and the local political commitment is only starting. In her view, we need to work on getting the awareness by all of us, not just the countries in the South, but also in this part of the world.

She also observed that despite there being more financing available, it is usually quite complex to access these resources by municipalities or governments.

Finally, external financing is not enough. In her view we need to look at long term financial models that can include taxation and national subsidies. It’s easy to build a sewage system, or buy trucks for a city and give them, but the institutions that are supposed to work with them are often not properly considered or integrated into the broader system. For example, many financial institutions will fund a landfill, or incinerator, and then after a few months or years what happens? She advised that financing institutions need to become smarter in how to fund the programmes. We as consumers will also need to adapt our consumption patterns. She referred to the export of plastic waste by the West, and the Chinese import ban on plastics instituted last year. This is creating now a problem for the exporters and obliges them to look at how we should be recycling. In her view, we all need to look at the issue, including institutions and lawmakers.

In the first round of questions, a representative from Pilot4Dev pointed out that they have good experience with nature protection and conservation projects and would like to scale them up with more funding. A woman from Nigeria pointed out that the ‘small people’ with no connection to government are not being heard by the development organisations. She referred to the Niger Delta, where they have developed bio-remedia but the local government rather uses companies who work with chemicals. She asked the agencies how she can get in touch with their local contact points. Someone from non profit organisation, Mundus Mares, also asked for support in scaling up projects on the ground with local groups. A representative from a Cyprus action group said they had noticed that plastic on their shores comes from elsewhere and asked for initiatives to put pressure on other authorities. He also observed that every year, hundreds of boats come to their coastal line and hunt tuna fish, he asked for precaution for this and is looking for answers to address their local issues.

In his reply, Mr Kleitze from AFD underlined that development agencies can help scale up initiatives in many ways. But he focused on financial sustainability: donors tend to rely too much on free public money, and not enough on sustainable financial models, whereby for instance the polluters pay and users pays back. Sustainability models need to be invented and scaled up to ensure for instance that a plastic bottle that ends up in the sea is collected and paid back by the industry that produced it. He observed that in our imperfect world we privatise profits and share the damages. These damages go back to the public sector, the NGOs, and the development sector…  In order to achieve a more sustainable model we need a strong commitment from the economic sector. Therefore he considers that the job of development agencies is to help states structure legal frameworks where responsibility at state level and private sector level is strong enough to cope with this as well.

Ms Hema acknowledged the concern of having local voices heard, as the priorities are often not the same. In fact, in the Mediterranean the MAP has some good experience in trying to involve the local actors in their activities; in particular for marine litter through local fishers, but additional funding is needed to make this happen. She also considers that the SWITCH-Med programme is a fantastic project that also exists for other regions. This programme creates opportunities for local actors to apply and obtain funds for local projects. As regards the use of incentives of ‘polluter pays’, she pointed out that this concept is in all their legal texts in the Mediterranean since some 25 years, but it is difficult to implement. When there was the Horizon2020 and MeHSIP programme one of the big issues was that it was difficult to build sustainable capacities in the countries, to participate and benefit from the project and to be in a position to undertake and maintain sustainability afterwards. It is not sufficient to build an investment, she said, what is important is that after the investment the work continues the same way, and this is the challenge that we are mainly facing.

Ms Jacob suggested that we need binding agreements for all countries around the world. As long as it is something not compulsory it will be too slow, she said. She suggested to blow up the urgency, so people understand it is really serious what is happening under water, and that it is our responsibility to lobby politicians on these issues. Regarding the scaling up of different small initiatives, she thinks that working together is the key.  Many small initiatives don’t last very long usually. Municipal waste for instance is generally handled by municipalities, as international agencies or NGOs we need to work with municipalities and see what is existing and bring in different stakeholders to work better together.

Mr Amor pointed at another aspect of scaling up, which is innovation: in his view we need to find the quick disrupting solutions that will have big impact, for instance support high tech companies at macro level that can help innovate, as well as look at supporting the companies at micro level for local solutions.

He also considered it illustrative of the seriousness of this issue, that you see the EIB, KfW and AFD, working with UNOPS, World Bank etc. and actually setting aside political squabbling and focus on what is most important. This Working Together is a good thing for the decade to come.

In a second round of questions, a consultant with the Ecuadorian government and with an organization called the Plastic Bank explained how this organization works with circular economies. She gave the example of a project in Indonesia where the Plastic Bank works with big companies such as Henkel. Whereas company social funds are usually used for greenwashing, in this case, the social funds are used very well: the Plastic bank collects plastics and pays people 3 times more, also individuals who provide plastics of less good quality. As a result this provides work. The collected plastics go to local recycling centres where they are transformed and then sold back to Henkel, in a perfect circle she said. In addition, the people are paid by a platform of blockchain provided by IBM, and so, for the first time these people have a savings account.

But for this type of initiatives you do need important and fast funds she explained. It takes some effort to get to the funds of governments and international institutions, whereas private investment and social funds are more agile she observed. We should start looking at these partnerships, and at how we can transform social funds that are misused in private sector, to put them to meaningful solutions.

A representative from non profit organization ‘All We Can’ was particularly interested in the producers of plastics and asked if we should tackle these issues (such as marine litter) preemptively instead of looking for solutions once it has happened already.

A representative from the World Customs Organization alluded to the responsibility of plastics exporting countries. European customs in particular do not appear to care about exporting plastics, she said. It is free. In her view, the solution should be simple: you manage the exporting goods as strict as those you are importing; it will then become impossible for plastic waste to go to Asia without any control.

Mr Gihr agreed that we need to increase producer responsibility; that would be a perfect solution, but even in the EU the level of recycling is still too far from where we would like to see it, he said. The introduction of such a system takes some 10 years and in the meantime more and more plastic is being dumped he noted. He would therefore propone an interim solution, whereby plastic is dumped in an orderly fashion. This would help the problem of littering the oceans, even if this is indeed not a good solution, but ‘a way of muddling through,’ he said.

Ms Hema agreed that recycling is definitely one of the ways to go, to make sure that plastic is not dumped; but we also need investments for innovative technologies in order to have plastic that is biodegradable. There are solutions we should focus on in the future to prevent upstream generation of plastic pollution she noted. In her view, financial institutions could provide support for this kind of technological and innovative development.

Ms Jacobs reminded everyone about the fact that one of the reasons why plastic is still being produced so much, is that there are subsidies on petroleum and byproducts. As long as we have these, plastic will be cheap. We need some 10 years to change that cycle. She asked all present to keep this in mind as an issue for political pressure. Thereby she questioned whether we should be substituting things like straws at all. She also pointed out that the UN has set up a sustainable consumption and production initiative with many NGOs, and which is called the One Planet Handle with Care initiative. In this context the UN tries to work hand in hand with the private sector, including big companies like Microsoft, and slowly trickle the message. She agrees that some big companies are still doing green washing but is rather optimistic and believes that within the next 5 years this will change as they are staffed by individuals that actually want this change. She was optimistic on the leading role of the private sector.

Mr Amor noted that the EIB works with the World Bank and that they look at regulatory regimes, and at the role of producers and how to change their activity.

Mr Kleitze underlined that the job to be done is enormous and that the development community and development banks should focus on where we put our priorities. From his perspective we need a balanced approach between 4 main approaches. We need to work on policy, on institutions, on the broad framing [of the issue of marine plastic pollution] at international, European and national levels, and development institutions have to help put pressure on parliaments for that. At the second level we still need to help do the cleaning up on the ground. AFD will continue funding water sewage systems for instance in the Congo or drainage water in Togo and Sri Lanka. This means equipping local communities, cities and countries with basic instruments to avoid these tons of plastic. If this is not done all plastic ends up in the sea while we try to solve the source issue. The third level:  financing innovation is key, such as nature-based solutions and social based solutions, combined with science. In his view if we do not put 4 or 5 percent of the oceans budget towards innovation we are wrong. Some of the big solutions will come from there. And lastly, a key way to succeed in tackling the problem, is by working together, and here especially the EU has a key role. 

Wrap up

All speakers appeared to agree with each other and concurred with the conclusions of Mr Kleitz.

Ms Hema added that we should coordinate the approach of setting priorities together; and on innovation, she pointed out that not all countries have same access to innovative technologies.

Mr Gihr added that we can learn a lot from small initiatives, from NGOs, and that we should integrate these in our day to day work.

Ms Jacobs concluded that solutions exist and are already implemented in many countries, we just need to make sure we use them and dont reinvent the wheel for everything. Furthermore, she believes that financial institutions need work out different financial models. They use the term ‘bankable projects’, but a return on investment is not just financial but also for the ocean and communities. The ocean health is also about overfishing so it is very important to keep this in mind. She advised the audience to look at own consumption and eat less fish.

Ms Haffner-Sifakis concluded the session by observing that all speakers agree on enhanced global cooperation, coordination, on learning from what’s on the ground, on meeting the financial gap, on making sure we get innovation out, that we look at return on investment in very ecosystem friendly way, learn from each other’s language,  etc.