Pacific islands pay the price for the world’s plastic addiction
Pacific islands such as Galapagos face a rising tide of plastic pollution brought to their shores by ocean currents, posing a threat to endemic wildlife, human health and local livelihoods.
In 2017, the uninhabited Pacific island of Henderson, part of the Pitcairn group and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, received a dubious honour. A study by researchers from the University of Tasmania and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds found that Henderson’s beaches contained an estimated 37.7 million items of plastic debris, the greatest density of marine plastic litter found on any island on Earth. Inevitably, the wildlife had been severely impacted, with dead sea turtles found entangled in the rubbish, and crabs using items such as empty cosmetic jars for their homes.
You may recognise the parallels with Galapagos. Research carried out by GCT and our partners has found at least 52 different species in Galapagos, both on land and in the sea, to be entangled in plastic, living in affected habitats or having ingested plastic after mistaking it for food. This includes iconic endemic species such as the Galapagos giant tortoise, the marine iguana and the waved albatross.
37.7 m
items of plastic debris on Henderson island's beaches
The growing threat to Pacific islands
There are some 25,000 islands scattered across the Pacific, home to over two million people. This includes small island developing states such as Fiji and Tonga; dependent territories including French Polynesia and the Pitcairn Islands; and island provinces or states that are part of larger nations, for example Galapagos, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Hawaii. While cultural, historical and ecological contexts may vary, they are all connected by the Pacific Ocean and its currents, and share many of the same environmental challenges.
Travel brochures tend to romanticise Pacific islands as impossibly remote places, idyllic and unspoilt, an escape from the modern world. Yet the reality is that islands across the region are at disproportionate risk from the intersecting crises of plastic pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss. Pacific island countries are estimated to contribute less than 1.3% of the mismanaged plastics in the world’s oceans, yet they now find their life support systems at risk from an incoming tide of plastic pollution.
This influx of waste is a serious threat to the future of tourism and fisheries, key industries for oceanic islands, and poses a threat to human health. It has a significant impact on Indigenous peoples, with their strong cultural, economic and social ties with the ocean.
GCT at the 2024 Pacific Leaders’ Summit
Galapagos and Rapa Nui (Easter Island) share many challenges, and we also have much to learn from each other, as we discovered at the 2024 Pacific Leaders’ Summit.
Pacific island communities and the plastic burden
In the last six years, Galapagos National Park rangers have removed 80 tonnes of plastic waste from the Archipelago’s coastlines, and our research shows that more than 95% of this plastic is likely to originate outside the Galapagos Marine Reserve (GMR). These clean-ups come at a considerable economic cost, diverting funds away from local communities that desperately need them. There is a fundamental injustice here, with island communities having to pick up the tab for pollution that they didn’t create.
Oceanographic modelling shows that northern Peru, southern Ecuador and Panama are the main continental sources of plastic pollution reaching Galapagos, transported to the sea by rivers, but we also have evidence of domestic plastic waste such as drinks bottles being dumped at sea. Our research shows that at least 40% of the plastic pollution washing up in Galapagos is from maritime sources, double the global average, and most of this plastic waste originates from fishing fleets operating near the GMR, before accumulating on east-facing beaches.
Lost or abandoned fishing gear presents a major entanglement risk for marine wildlife, not just in Galapagos but across the Pacific region. A study published in Scientific Reports in 2018 found that approximately 46% of the 79,000 tons of ocean plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) was made up of fishing nets. The GPGP, situated between California and Hawaii, is sometimes nicknamed ‘the eighth continent’, covering an area of ocean three times the size of France.
There is also a South Pacific garbage patch off the coast of Chile and Peru, responsible for dumping huge quantities of plastic on islands such as Henderson and Rapa Nui. Plastic pollution entering the ocean and rivers is predicted to triple in the next 20 years if substantial solutions are not implemented quickly, with global ocean plastic pollution predicted to reach 23 – 37 million tons per year by 2040. Numbers like these can seem overwhelming, even before we factor in the political difficulties inherent in trying to agree a Global Plastics Treaty with countries that rely heavily on the petrochemical industry.
A study published in Marine Pollution Bulletin earlier this year by members of the Pacific Plastics: Science to Solutions network, which is co-led by GCT and the University of Exeter, found that there is no significant difference between the levels of plastic pollution inside and outside marine protected areas in the Eastern Tropical and South-Eastern Pacific, demonstrating the limitations of existing policy tools when it comes to addressing the plastic problem.
Read our report
A landmark new report published in September 2024 by Galapagos Conservation Trust and the Galapagos National Park Directorate presents the most detailed picture to date of the threat that coastal plastic pollution poses to the Galapagos Islands.
From science to solutions
However, we believe that by taking a ‘science to solutions’ approach, we can break this problem down into more manageable chunks and identify the areas where we can quickly make a difference. When we launched the Plastic Pollution Free Galapagos programme in 2018, we knew very little about the plastic washing up on Galapagos coastlines. Where was it coming from? What effect was it having? We now have five years’ worth of data, which is already feeding into the Galapagos National Park Directorate’s plastics management plan, helping to identify priority areas for clean-ups.
Our evidence has been cited by policymakers, both at a local level and on the international stage, and is being used to drive forward solutions such as the development of a circular economy on the Islands, with a focus on high-risk items such as single-use plastic bags.
Over the coming years we plan to build on our existing network and develop new collaborations across the Pacific region, drawing on community solutions and Indigenous wisdom. We hope to share the lessons we have learned in Galapagos more widely, gather more evidence and make new connections with other islands confronting the same problems. This, we believe, is the key to developing scalable and sustainable solutions to protect both biodiversity and local communities across the Pacific.