Aim: To understand and model environmental, socioeconomic, and health and wellbeing impacts of reducing plastic contamination in Indonesia.
UK lead: Professor Mel Austen, University of Plymouth.
Indonesia lead: Dr Gede Hendrawan, Universitas Udayana.
Partner network: Dr Radisti Praptiwi, Esa Unggul University; Professor Joyashree Roy, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand.
The impacts of plastic contamination on the marine environment and human health and wellbeing are uncertain, but are likely to be varied. A key priority for Indonesia is to identify and protect vulnerable habitats, wildlife, communities, and economic and social sectors. The PISCES team will use state-of-the-art methods to determine the impacts of plastic prevention on ecosystem services. These will be integrated in novel ways to identify the costs of inaction and to predict the efficacy of interventions. The team will identify and model the spread and distribution of plastic debris in the sea, encompassing plastic discharge from rivers, and widening models to include the coastal area of Java. They will research where and how ecosystem services are most likely to be impacted in the PISCES case study areas, and suggest scenarios where ecosystem services could be enhanced if plastic waste were reduced or eliminated. Through input of monetary and non-monetary indicators into a ‘Plastic Pollution Calculator’ and a systems analysis framework (to be produced by WP5), the team will identify and quantify the economic benefits of various interventions. They will also estimate the costs of damage to engineered infrastructure from plastic waste debris drainage systems, and the impact of plastic debris on their productivity. The chain of actors will be identified, and the economic cost burden on them will be determined through valuation of total welfare loss using a production function approach. The team will identify the costs and benefits of using alternative instruments (regulatory, incentive based, non-economic) to address plastic impacts across various municipalities, including links to social and cultural issues.
