The evolving global plastics policy landscape: An inventory and effectiveness review

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.

My day to day research focus is ecology with emphasis on larval biology, chemical, behavioral, spatial ecology and environmental toxicology. Theoretical contributions are in the origins and evolution of chemical systems. Presently, there are three areas of focus: 1) Ecology and behavioral biology of local macroinvertebrates such as blue crabs and mud snails; 2) Barnacle models as they relate to fouling and the prevention of fouling and bioadhesives; 3. Impacts of xenobiotics on behavior and reproduction. I and my students are funded in all three areas with grants to work on a variety of aspects of ecology and reproduction of blue crabs, grants to study families of barnacles with heritable biological adhesive phenotypes and to provide expertise in barnacle biology and to provide living material for the Office of Naval Research Fouling Research program and funding to study impacts of biocide boosters on reproduction and fecundity of target and non target species. I am continuing to participate in an antifouling program in Singapore which began January 2000. The Singapore program has the goal of using drugs from medicine as environmentally benign antifoulants. I have recently begun collaborative research programs in India and Brazil.

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.