Plastic free Rivers and Seas for South Asia

active

The objective of the Plastic Free Rivers and Seas for South Asia Project is to strengthen innovation and coordination of circular economy solutions to plastic pollution flowing into South Asian Seas. The Project has three components. Component 1. Supporting Competitive Block Grant Investments to Reduce Plastic Waste will identify, verify and invest in circular plastic economy solutions and facilitate the exchange of knowledge and awareness of these solutions. Subcomponent 1.1: Investing in Circular Solutions to Reduce Plastic Waste will support circular plastic economy solutions to reduce plastic waste by implementing a program of regional competitive block grant investments. Subcomponent 1.2: Promoting Knowledge Exchange and Awareness will facilitate the exchange of circular plastic economy knowledge between Eligible Regional Competitive Block Grant (RBG) Beneficiaries and selected South Asian countries and promotes awareness raising activities. 2. Leveraging Public and Private Sector Engagement and Solutions component will provide support to develop and/or improve national and regional plastic pollution mitigation strategies and action plans, policies and industry standards. Subcomponent 2.1: Enabling Policies, Standards, and Analytics will support the development of strategies, action plans, policies, and standards to harmonize plastic pollution mitigation measures through: (a) developing and implementing a multi-year plastic policy support program, working with leading universities and organizations; (b) developing a database for lifecycle analysis, data collection, and modeling related to plastic across selected industry value chains; and (c) supporting communication activities. Subcomponent 2.2: Enabling Regional Public and Private Engagement will support circular use of plastic in the economy through regional public-private collaboration and engagement in South Asia, including designing and organizing annual or more frequent meetings of representatives from public and private sector. 3. Strengthening Regional Integration Institutions component will strengthen regional organizations’ capacity to coordinate and to support their member-states to better deliver on solutions to mitigate plastic pollution that flows into rivers and seas across South Asia and transition to a more circular plastic economy. Subcomponent 3.1: Building South Asia Cooperative Environment Program’s (SACEP’s) Institutional Capacity will support SACEP’s ability to convene and coordinate with regional organizations, line ministries and governments, including to uniformly collect, analyze and interpret pollution data will better inform policy and decision making support for investment planning, design and implementation. Subcomponent 3.2: Project Management will support SACEP in the implementation and overall management of the Project.