By — Shreya Parameshwaran

Abstract

The Global South has been unduly affected by exported plastic pollution. Saving the Global South from the adverse health impacts of plastic pollution such as cancer and respiratory diseases would also save the Global South’s financially and nutritionally important fisheries as well as breaking the cycle of poverty caused by accumulating medical debt. The World Bank has predicted that without any mitigation measures, the impact of plastic pollution on the Global South will further displacement approximately 10-20 million people into extreme poverty. In Southeast Asia, the informal waste pickers (many of whom are women and children) are exposed to the plastics pollution on a daily basis, as are the fishers whose fish stocks collapse due to the plastics pollution. Global producer responsibility, equitable circular economies, grant-based finance for clean-up, and community-led adaptation to protect the vulnerable from the disaster are important to address this crisis.

Introduction: Plastic Crisis Fuels Inequality

The Global South suffers the most from plastic-pollution epidemic. The Global South receives plastic pollution from the Global North as a means of economic inequality and social injustice. The Global South receives plastic from the Global North due to the North being consumer driven and the South being a supplier. The Global South is the receiving end of the Global North’s trash and burn practice. The Global North’s trash and burn practice is where a country opens a landfill and starts to burn trash. The chemical dump on the groundwater, which is combined with the global south’s drinking water and the global south’s agricultural soil.

Increased poverty due to poorly administered governments in the Global South leads to informal settlements. For instance, in Ghana where poor governance creates gaps between health policies and their implementation, leaving injury care systems under-resourced and patients vulnerable. Vulnerability towards informal settlements increases due to poorly administered governments. Community dumpsites suffer from a lack of government-supported clean-up operations. Emergency clean-up operations defund the communities from government-supported health and educational operations. The clean-up operations capture the cycle of poverty. The cycle of poverty captures the clean-up operation and reverses the development in the post-poverty.

Asset Loss and Health Threats

Destruction of assets starts with direct strikes; plastics obstruct city drainage systems leading to floods that destroy houses, destroy crops and  kill livestock. For instance, the Deluge of Mumbai in 2005, where obstructed rainfall turned the situation into a catastrophe that claimed more than a thousand lives. The marine environment is also affected; microplastics are taken up by fish, and the toxins get bioaccumulated in the entire aquatic food web. Hence, resulting in a 20 to 50 % reduction in fish catch in the polluted waters and impoverishing the already poor by not providing them with proteins and also by crashing the local economy that relies on fish sales. These shocks are layered, and as a result, people are forced to sell their assets and migrate, which breaks the social fabric.

Case Study: Asia-Pacific Coasts

Southeast Asia shows the full extent of the scale of crisis, with countries such as India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam leading the world on the contribution of plastic waste into the oceans. This is the result of a combination of high population density, poor plastic waste management enforcement, and the importing of plastic waste. Communities try to cope with the situation in a variety of ways, including desperate scavenging for recyclables on the beaches which puts them at risk from heavy metal pollution, boiling of water for consumption which puts them at risk for diarrhoea and other water borne diseases, urban migration and the creation of shanty settlements. Increased poverty as more and more children stop attending school to work and help the family survive.

Labor and Livelihood: Traps Informal Workers and Debt Cycles

Well over 15-20 million waste pickers in the global south, mostly women sifting through toxic waste for a few pennies, informal waste pickers are medically documented to have skin diseases, infertility, and cognitive disorders due to unprotected exposure to phthalates and lead and are covered in extreme heat and other poisons. The unbearable work situations lead to 28% reductions in hours worked. Smallholder fishers and farmers face parallel ruin. In the Pokkali rice fields in Kerala, microplastics are measured at 1,370 fragments/m³, impacting soil microbes and phytoplankton. This poses a threat to the crop yields and food security of vulnerable growers that are already strained from erratic monsoons. The chronic nature of the contamination leads to a loss of resilience. Environmental stress is transformed into poverty that is no longer cyclical. Families are forced to borrow at increasingly higher rates in order to keep the farm going.

Waste Colonialism and Finance Gaps

Waste colonialism exemplifies inequity, as the Global North bypasses domestic legislation and offloads 50% of its plastic waste to the Global South. As locals bear the human and environmental costs, Break Free from Plastic’s audits have shown Nestlé to be the top brand of beach litter. COP promises of 100 billion dollars per year in climate finance are under 10% of funds that are pegged to adapt waste-related infrastructures. These funds are being offered on loan, which increases the debt of countries that are already paying off loans at 150% of their GDP. First, ‘top down’ solutions have shown no understanding of sociocultural contexts of the informal and indigenous groups who are the most sustainable but are the least funded.

Pathways to Equity and Resilience

Urgent Mitigation requires a Plastic Pollution Treaty at the UN by 2026 and producer responsibility starting 2026, forcing Corporations to pay for collection and redesign packaging to reduce virgin plastic by 50% by 2040. Community microgrids for safe waste processing, the adaptation of early warning apps for floods, and universal social protections through cash transfers address affected workers. Grants rather than loans, debt-for-nature swaps forgiving $500 billion associated with circular hubs, and equal access to technology for transfers to women cooperatives focused on biodegradable substitutes, are crucial for the Global South. Reparations from the Global North must centre on the voices of the frontrunners for impact.

Conclusion: Unequal Polluter, Shared Imperative

Plastic pollution is a problem that isn’t neutral; it uses Global North consumption against Global South weaknesses, damaging health, economies and futures of those least responsible. Without legally binding treaties, emission-type production cuts, and justice finance, the 2030 projections of 29 million more in poverty become reality. Plastic pollution is a problem that is caused and perpetuated by the Global North, and the Global North is still in control. It is time to act in a way that will preserve development, and stop the unravelling caused by plastic pollution.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: 

I am Shreya Parameshwaran, a law student working at the confluence of social and environmental justice. My commitment to the legal profession stems from the need to defend and advance human dignity and the sovereignty of the earth, and to resist structural violence that gravely injures the planet and its inhabitants. I love the legal profession’s research and writing components as they stimulate me to work on issues that silence the dwarfed members of our society, who are at the centre of the ecological turmoil. My work, whether it is chronicling the contending claims of land rights, critiquing the failures of legal and policy frameworks, or calling for unity beyond borders, attempts to reconcile legal and social/political paradigms to attain a reality where the law is an instrument of social justice for everyone.