Riverine Plastic Pollution in Asia: Results from a Bibliometric Assessment

Authors

Peter Yang, Case Western Reserve UniversityFollow

Author ORCID Identifier

Peter Yang

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-21-2022

Abstract

Rivers are important ecosystems, vital to the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of humans and other species. Despite their environmental, social, and economic importance, current use of rivers is unsustainable, due to a combination of solid waste and high levels of pollutants. Plastic materials are among the most predominant of such pollutants. Based on the need for additional research in this area, this study examines pressures put to rivers and explores trends related to riverine plastic pollution, with a focus on Asia. Apart from the bibliometric analysis, and relying on the collected information, examples describing the drivers of riverine plastic pollution in a sample of Asian countries are described, outlining the specific problem and its scope. Among some of the results obtained from it, mention can be made to the fact that much of the literature focuses on plastic pollution as a whole and less on one of its most significant ramifications, namely microplastics. Additionally, there is a need related to data availability on riverine plastic data and improving the understanding of transport mechanisms in relation to riverine plastic emission into the ocean. The results from this study illustrate the significance of the problems posed by plastic waste to Asian rivers and point out the fact that there are still significant gaps in respect of regulations and standards, which prevent improvements that are highlighted in this study. Based on the results of this bibliometric assessment, specific measures via which levels of riverine plastic pollution may be reduced are presented, bringing relevant new insights on this topic beyond the existing reviews.

Keywords

Asia, plastic pollution, rivers, riverine ecosystems, sustainability

Publication Title

Land

Rights

© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Leal Filho, W., Dedeoglu, C., Dinis, M. A. P., Salvia, A. L., Barbir, J., Voronova, V., Abubakar, I. R., Iital, A., Pachel, K., Huthoff, F., Sharifi, A., Yang, P. J., Klavins, M., & Emanche, V. O. (2022). Riverine Plastic Pollution in Asia: Results from a Bibliometric Assessment. Land, 11(7), 1117. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11071117