2023 Annual Trends in Plastics Policy: A Brief
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2023-08-31
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Abstract
In the first annual update of Annual Trends in Plastics Policy, Nicholas Institute researchers find that plastics policy enactment continues to surge and was not negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, researchers found more than 300 additional policies to index in the Plastics Policy Inventory, upon which this report is based, for a total of 894 policies. The 2022 update to the inventory increased the total by more than 50%.
However, gaps in scope and implementation remain. Though more policies address additional types of single-use plastics, most still target only plastic bags. Microplastics and marine sources remain relatively unaddressed, and economic instruments are a minority of policy instruments used.
To better gauge policy implementation, researchers established a new effectiveness policy library to accompany the 2022 update. These studies indicate that, while underused in existing policy, greater governmental use of economic instruments (e.g., taxes, fees, levies) and information instruments (e.g., awareness campaigns to communicate other instruments to the public, education initiatives, etc.) would aid in enacting effective policies in the future.
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Karasik, Rachel, Tibor Vegh, Ria Utz, Andrew Dominguez, Melissa Skarjune, Juan Merlo, Natalie Dixon, John Virdin, et al. (2023). 2023 Annual Trends in Plastics Policy: A Brief. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/31692.
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Tibor Vegh
Tibor Vegh serves as a senior policy associate with the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability. He is an applied social scientist with a background in environmental planning and economics. Vegh’s applied and policy-relevant research centers on the resilience of coupled human and natural systems; the economic, social, and environmental implications within the context of coastal adaptation; and the reliance on natural systems to benefit communities in the face of uncertainty and environmental risks. Vegh is a lead or collaborator on a wide range of projects where he contributes his economic, financial, and policy analysis skills, as well as his understanding of environmental planning approaches to solve real-world problems.
Vegh’s most recent work focuses on the social and economic aspects of coastal and urban resilience and multidimensional adaptation to risks in coastal and ocean systems. He has also collaborated on projects spanning many other topics, including fisheries economics, plastics pollution mitigation, ecological restoration, ecosystem service markets, bioenergy, and more.
Vegh holds a PhD in city and regional planning with a focus on environmental planning from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. He earned his master's degree in forestry with a focus on economics from Northern Arizona University in 2011 and his bachelor's degree in economics with a minor in mathematics from North Carolina State University in 2008.
John Virdin
John Virdin has worked for almost twenty-five years studying and advising government policies to both conserve the ocean environment and alleviate poverty throughout the tropics. His focus has been largely on supporting governments to manage fisheries to provide more food and livelihoods over the long term, eventually expanding to work on broader ocean-based economic development policies, and more recently reducing ocean plastic pollution. He directs the Oceans and Coastal Policy Program at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability, aiming to connect Duke University’s science and ideas to help policy-makers solve ocean sustainability problems. He has collaborated in this effort with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the United Nations Environment Program, the United Nations Development Program and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, as well as regional organizations such as the Abidjan Convention secretariat, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, the Sub-Regional Fisheries Commission of West Africa and the Parties to the Nauru Agreement for tuna fisheries management in the Western Pacific. He also teaches at the Nicholas School of the Environment, where he co-created and taught an introductory course for undergraduate students to understand the role of policy in helping solve many of society’s most pressing ocean conservation challenges, and a graduate course on international policies aiming to solve the problem of overfishing.
Prior to coming to Duke at the beginning of 2015, he worked for 12 years at the World Bank, helping the organization increase its funding for ocean conservation and fisheries management to more than $1 billion. His work spanned more than 20 countries and led to the development of programs that provided more than $125 million in funding for improved fisheries management in six West African states and some $40 million for fisheries and ocean conservation in at least four Pacific Island states and throughout the region. He supported and acted as program manager for the World Bank’s Global Partnership for Oceans, a coalition of more than 150 governments, companies, non-governmental organizations, philanthropies and multilateral agencies that operated from 2012 through 2014.
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