Environmental Monitoring: Global and Indian Perspectives

Summary

Plastic pollution is high on the international scientific agenda. This includes larger plastic waste items (macroplastics), as well as smaller plastic particles (microplastics). Monitoring of plastic pollution provides baseline data on the spatial distribution of pollution, identifies spatiotemporal trends in pollution occurrence, and can help to unpick important processes underpinning the fate and impacts of pollution in the environment. This chapter examines evolving international and national (Indian) trends and perspectives related to monitoring of macro- and microplastic. A strong, early marine focus particularly on marine litter—macroplastics at sea—is observed globally and in India, which has evolved into the dominance of microplastic monitoring over the past decade. Internationally, there has also been a shift towards increasing monitoring of freshwater and terrestrial environments corresponding with the identification of land-based sources as being dominant in global plastic releases. This same trend is less evident in India, although a small number of papers emerging in the previous 18 months indicate that attention is shifting nationally also. Harmonisation remains an ongoing challenge, both internationally and nationally and for both macro- and microplastic monitoring.