FAO

Over the last decades years, the use of plastics in agrifood systems and food value chains has become pervasive. FAO estimates that every year 12.5 million tonnes of plastics are used in plant and animal production, and an additional 37.3 million tonnes in food packaging (FAO, 2021). The crop production and livestock sectors are the largest users, accounting for 10 million tonnes per year (2.8 percent of the global plastic production), followed by fisheries and aquaculture with 2.1 million tonnes, and forestry with 0.2 million tonnes. Agricultural plastics have both positive and negative impacts on food security, food safety and nutrition, as well as on social and economic dimensions of sustainability.
 
The widespread and repeated use of plastic products in agriculture, coupled with the lack of systematic collection and of sustainable use and management, leads to their accumulation in soils and aquatic environments, with potential harm to human, animal, plant, and environmental health - impacting all domains of One Health.
 
FAO supports Members in improving the sustainability of plastics used in all agricultural sectors - crops and livestock, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture.
 
FAO efforts towards a sustainable use of plastics in agriculture, inter alia, are developed as one of the focus areas of the Programme Priority Area Bioeconomy for sustainable food and agriculture, in FAO's Strategic Framework for 2022–2031. Specific efforts to address sea-based sources of marine plastic litter, in particular from fisheries, also contributes to Programme Priority Area on Blue Transformation.

The GloLitter Partnerships Project is joined by the RegLitter Project and GEF funded PRO-SEAS project under the IMO OceanLitter Programmeme, to allow for efficient coordination and knowledge-sharing between the projects to benefit member states in the drive to combat marine plastic litter from the shipping and fisheries industries. The Programmeme is executed jointly between IMO and FAO and ensures continued positive progress towards a healthier marine ecosystem through implementation of the international conventions and instruments of IMO such as Marpol Annex V, London Convention/Protocol and implementation of the IMO Action Plan to Address Marine Plastic
Litter from Ships, as well as FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the Marking of Fishing Gear, and towards the relevant Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.

Over the past decade, there has been increasing recognition of the need to address the adverse ecological and socioeconomic effects of abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear (ALDFG). There is extremely limited understanding of the life cycle and end-of-life management of fishing gear, trends in the magnitude of ALDFG entering aquatic environments, and the effectiveness of interventions to avoid, minimize and remediate the production and adverse effects of ALDFG (GESAMP, 2021)
 
Considering the adverse effects of ALDFG, and the gap in knowledge of rates and magnitudes of ALDFG production, the Committee on Fisheries (COFI) recommended that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) expand work to fill these priority knowledge gaps. The FAO Fishing Technology and Operations Team (NFIFO) has developed standardized fisher survey forms to collect information on the causes and rates of production of ALDFG and established an online portal for entering, storing and analyzing ALDFG fisher survey data. The FAO Global ALDFG Survey enables ALDFG data collected through fisher interviews to be combined so that broad, national, regional and global level analyses can be conducted.
 
Gear-specific questionnaires are available in different languages. Survey responses are entered into a dedicated FAO online portal, followed by data verification processes. Automated reports presenting the results of the survey are generated and shared with the survey partner(s). All survey data is confidential, with co-ownership of the data collected shared between FAO and the survey partner(s).”

The ICES-FAO Working Group on Fishing Technology and Fish Behavior (WGFTFB) established a Topic Group (TG) on Abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear (ALDFG) in 2023 with a duration for three years, that will conclude at the end of 2025. The ALDFG TG was developed to review, discuss and investigate gear modification and designs that aim to prevent and reduce ghost fishing from ALDFG, enable gear stewardship through the inclusion of gear marking and tracking technologies, and support the responsible discard of recovered ALDFG and other unwanted or end of life fishing gear. The topic group is comprised of members of the ICES-FAO WGFTFB, including fishing gear technologists and researchers, and representatives from academia, research, civil society and NGO sectors.
 
A new Topic Group has been proposed for the following 3 years focusing on “Means and methods for the implementation of FAO Voluntary Guidelines on the Marking of Fishing Gear”