A geostatistical approach to joint stakeholder prioritization for tackling marine plastics pollution in Hong Kong

Abstract

The pressing need to solve marine plastics pollution as a multi-source and multi-stakeholder problem is an ongoing global issue. This presents a challenge to policy makers tasked with understanding and accommodating different stakeholder perceptions and weighting their alternative propositions for solutions. In the case of Hong Kong, pollution of the marine environment by discarded plastics, polystyrenes and other items is a cumulative and accelerating problem that has yet to be resolved. We demonstrate how a geostatistical mapping approach can achieve joint stakeholder prioritization at any such regional scale. Joint prioritized area mapping is a methodology that links perspectives of otherwise disparate stakeholders to ecosystem-based-management, thereby balancing ecological, socio-economic and governance principles across temporal and spatial scales. It can serve as a generic scoping tool to help assess any marine spatial planning problem.