Plastic Production and Trade in Small States and SIDS: The Shift Towards a Circular Economy

This paper focuses not only on the special needs of small states and small island developing states (SIDS) in the challenge to reduce plastics pollution, production and trade, but also on the opportunities. It draws on new information made available in an UNCTAD prototype database that tracks trade in plastics across the entire life cycle and identifies phases in the plastics industry that could offer export opportunities to small states and SIDS. However, this kind of structural transformation will not happen by itself. Part of the solution will depend upon having coherent trade policies, industrial circularity, effective waste management policies and incentives for the emergence of sustainable plastic substitutes and related sunrise industries that meet the need to reduce plastics use and pollution.