Date of Award
2021
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Marine Affairs
Department
Marine Affairs
First Advisor
Elizabeth Mendenhall
Abstract
Marine plastic pollution is an ongoing global problem, with adverse consequences on human health and marine ecosystems, and requires diverse solutions to eliminate leakages into the oceans via rivers, waste outflows, and direct dumping from vessels. Developed coastal states, like South Korea, have been quietly investing in marine litter management strategies that focus on coastal areas. South Korea is required by national law to establish marine debris management plans that implement policies to address the prevention, collection, and promotion of marine litter. One of these strategies include the implementation of floating debris containment booms (FDCB) in South Korean coastal and riverine areas. This research explores the efficacy of FDCB’s through a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) framework within the broader context of South Korean technological developmentalism, and compares it to existing technologies that collect marine debris. This analysis aims to address strategies that assist in decelerating the threat that marine debris poses to the marine environment and investigate South Korea’s FDCB’s as a potential case study to inform on scalable and transferable technologies that respond to coastal debris outflows, given that communities around the world face similar sets of challenges. Overall, this study considers FDCB’s as an efficient and effective solution to reducing the flow of marine debris from land to sea when incorporated within the larger scheme of global and national interventions.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Baron Lopez, Eliya M., "MARINE DEBRIS REMOVAL: A CASE STUDY ON SOUTH KOREAN MARINE LITTER MANAGEMENT" (2021). Open Access Master's Theses. Paper 1942.
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/theses/1942