State of the evidence on the impacts of fishing plastic waste to coastal communities: protocol for a Systematic Evidence Map

Abstract

Background: Fishing plastic waste (FPW) is known to cause multidimensional impacts to coastal communities globally. Detailed information on the environmental, socioeconomic and technical dimensions of effects to coastal communities caused by FPW has yet to be collated and considered in one place.

Methods: The main aim of this study is to identify, organise and group existing primary evidence of the environmental, social, economic, political, and technical impacts of FPW on coastal communities and identify gaps in our knowledge about which types of FPW are most problematic.

Search Strategy: We will search several databases across four electronic academic indexes (Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed and EBSCOhost [Business Source Complete, CINAHL Plus, EconLit, GreenFile, and Humanities International Index]).

Eligibility Criteria: Eligible studies must contain primary research investigating an environmental, social, economic, political, or technical impact of fragments of any size of plastic polymers (macro-, micro-, or nano-) originating from fishing equipment (i.e., capture and ancillary) that has been abandoned, lost, or otherwise discarded in the marine environment, affecting any defined human or non-human (vertebrates, invertebrates, micro-organisms) individual, group or assemblage of individuals, relying on coastal and ocean resources. Environmental impacts include physical and physiological effects to biotic and abiotic elements of marine ecosystems. Social impacts include impacts to community health and wellbeing. Economic impacts include impacts to livelihood and trade. Political impacts include responses from local or regional governments to address FPW. Technical impacts include effects to techniques employed by fisherfolk or to the management of FPW at the local level.

Screening & Extraction: Our search was optimised on Cadima. Articles will be screened at title and abstract, before a full-text review. All articles will be screened by a single reviewer, with two additional reviewers assessing articles for consistency. One out of ten articles will be screened by two additional reviewers in duplicate as a quality control. Data extraction will be performed on all articles included at full text, and articles that do not meet the eligibility criteria will be excluded. All articles excluded at full text will be confirmed by the two additional reviewers.

Study Mapping & Reporting: Results will be published in a narrative summary and visualised in a publicly available, user-friendly, interactive and interrogable evidence map on Tableau.