Background Study

“Students Perspectives on the Leading Cause of Water Pollution in the

The continuous growth in the amount of solid waste that humans generate, and the
very slow rate at which that waste degrades, are together leading to a gradual increase in the
amount litter found at sea, on the seafloor and along coastlines around the world.

Human activities on land are the biggest sources of marine pollution—an estimated 8
million tonnes of plastic waste enter the world’s oceans each year. These include solid waste
dumped along coastlines, scattered litter on beaches, and pieces of broken down ships. Floods
and other storm-related events flush this waste into the sea, where it sinks or is carried away by
currents. The major sea-based sources of marine pollution include discarded fishing gear,
shipping activities, and legal and illegal dumping.

All of this pollution causes serious economic losses. Coastal communities face increased
expenditures on beach cleaning, public health and waste disposal. The shipping industry is
impacted by higher costs associated with fouled propellers, damaged engines and managing
waste in harbours. The fishing industry faces damaged gear and reduced and contaminated
catch.

An estimated 8 million tons of plastic waste enter the world’s oceans each year.
Marine pollution also causes biodiversity loss and hampers ecosystem functions and services.
Discarded fishing gear can entangle and kill marine life and smother wildlife habitats. Pesticides
and other toxins adhere to tiny particles of discarded plastics (microplastics), which can be
accidentally ingested by small aquatic life. Once ingested, the toxins move up the food chain,
accumulating in birds, sea life and possibly humans.

UNEP’s Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment
from Land-Based Activities, which has been active since 1995, aims to provide guidance to
national and regional authorities on how to prevent, reduce, control and eliminate marine
degradation from land-based activities. Launched in 2017, UNEP’s #CleanSeas campaign urges
governments to enact policies to reduce the use of plastic, targeting industry to minimize
plastic packaging and redesign products, and calling on consumers to change their throwaway
habits before irreversible damage is done to our seas. UNEP also works through the Regional
Seas programme to strengthen marine protections around the world.
 Water pollution from agriculture has direct negative impacts on human health; for
example, the well-known blue-baby syndrome in which high levels of nitrates in
water can cause methaemoglobinemia – a potentially fatal illness – in infants. Pesticide
accumulation in water and the food chain, with demonstrated ill effects on humans,
led to the widespread banning of certain broad-spectrum and persistent pesticides
(such as DDT and many organophosphates), but some such pesticides are still used in
poorer countries, causing acute and likely chronic health effects. Aquatic ecosystems
are also affected by agricultural pollution; for example, eutrophication caused by the
accumulation of nutrients in lakes and coastal waters has impacts on biodiversity and
fisheries.

Coastal contamination has happened on practically all beaches that have become
tourist destinations, in addition to sea pollution or ocean pollution. The amount of waste
strewn along the coast is one of the hallmarks of coastal pollution that we can see right away.
Oil spills and the disruption of coastal ecological balance are two other characteristics of
contaminated beaches. We must understand the causes of coastal pollution in order to prevent
it from occurring.

A variety of deterministic and statistical methods have been used to develop models of
nitrogen transport from human and natural sources to coastal waters. The simplest
deterministic approaches provide a static accounting of nitrogen inputs (e.g., fertilizer
application, atmospheric deposition) and outputs (e.g., river export, crop removal). Where
sources or sinks (e.g., denitrification in soils and streams, groundwater storage) cannot be
measured, estimates are often determined as a difference between the, measured inputs and
outputs. These simple mass balance models assume that loss processes operate equally on all
sources and that the relative contributions of sources to coastal waters are proportional to
nitrogen inputs to the watersheds. More complex deterministic models of nitrogen flux
simulate nitrogen availability, transport, and attenuation processes according to mechanistic
functions and describe both spatial and temporal variations in sources and sinks. A third
approach [export coefficient method; has been to apply the reported
yields (flux per unit area) from small, homogeneous watersheds to the variety of land types
contained within larger heterogeneous basins.

According to Ocean Conservancy and McKinsey (2015), the Philippines is the third-
ranking contributor to plastic pollution in the world, with 2.7 million metric tons of plastic
waste generated every year (Braganza, 2017). Of this plastic waste, 20 percent is estimated to
end up in ocean environments (Braganza, 2017; Ocean Conservancy & McKinsey 2015). Most of
this pollution, however, is not due to a lack of waste collection sites. About 74 percent of
plastics that leak into the ocean were initially collected but escaped from open landfills that are
located near vulnerable waterways (WWF, 2018). The Philippines consumes plastic at a rate
that is very difficult for waste management plans to keep up with. A major contributor to such
unregulated disposal of plastics in the Philippines is the proliferation of the sachet economy,
where many consumer goods are imported, packaged, and sold in single-use containers that
are difficult or impossible to recycle. Reports estimate that almost 60 billion sachets are used
per year in the Philippines.

Preferences:

https://www.unep.org/beatpollution/forms-pollution/marine-and-coastal

Mateo-Sagasta, J., Zadeh, S.M. and Turral, H. 2017. Water pollution from agriculture: a global
review. Executive summary. FAO (UN) and International Water Management Institute.

Hey J (2021) Coastal Water Pollution and its Causes. J Coast Zone Manag. S7:001.

Jaworski et al. 1992; Jordan and Weller, 1996; Howarth et al. 1996

e.g., Bicknell et al. 1997; Srinivasan et al. 1993; Whitehead et al. 1998

e.g. Fisher and Oppenheimer, 1991; Delwiche and Haith, 1983

Braganza, 2017; Ocean Conservancy & McKinsey 2015

Galarpe et al., 2021; Posadas, 2014

This research aims to know the students perspectives on the leading cause of water pollution in
the coastal area.

Specifically, it aims in the following questions:

1. What are the student perspectives on the leading cause of water pollution in the coastal
area?

2. What are the solution to prevent water pollution in the coastal area?

3. What are the causes and effects of the water pollution?