Sustainable Ship Waste Management for ASEAN

While 20% of marine waste comes from maritime activity, South-East Asia, as the busiest shipping route in the world, is among the regions most exposed to this type of pollution.

Addressing to this environmental issue, the “ASEAN Sustainable Ship Waste Management” project contributes to improving the quality of the marine environment in South East Asia by reducing illegal discharges of ship waste. It is based on the results achieved during the “Rethinking Plastics – Circular Economy to Marine Litter” program implemented by Expertise France and GIZ between 2019 and 2022 co-funded by the European Union and Germany.

The project aims to strengthen regional cooperation in the management of ship waste by strengthening the capacities of Member States and initiating a consultation process to enable the development of an adequate harmonized regional policy.

To this purpose, dialogue has been initiated with ASEAN member states to develop an operational management strategy across ASEAN. In order to ensure the support of stakeholders and their full ownership of the produced tools and policy documents, ASEAN and the Member States are involved in all stages of the process, in a logic of co-construction.

The project contributes to strengthening relationship between France and ASEAN, by offering new prospects for cooperation with this regional organization.

To carry out this action, Expertise France has designed a two-phase project aimed at identifying the main issues at national level, those which will be consolidated into a shared common strategy:

1. The establishment of a cooperation framework facilitating the identification and consultation on recommendations shared at the regional level

- To strengthen stakeholders by organizing training and a study tour,

- To organize and lead regional consultation on ship waste management at the margins of the ASEAN Maritime Transport Working Group (MTWG) meetings,

- To carry out a national diagnostic for each Member State (9 countries),

- To suggest shared recommendations within ASEAN.

2. The establishment of a regional strategy on the management of ship waste and its national implementations

- In close collaboration with ASEAN and its MTWG: to develop a regional strategy for the sustainable and harmonized management of maritime waste,

- To facilitate the validation of the strategy at a high decision-making level,

- To co-construct roadmaps for the operational implementation of the strategy at the level of member States.