The workshop brought together various actors from the Barents Sea region to foster multidisciplinary approach and cross-border collaboration for effective monitoring as well as prioritizing and coordinating actions to combat the pollutions problem.

The program of the first day focused on an overview of the previous results of the project (the interactive webinar series), an introduction to the next UNEP Massive Open Online Course on Marine Litter in Russian that will be available for all interested actors in early 2022, and a DPSIR workshop, which included group work. Russian and Norwegian participants analyzed problems related to marine litter according to the DPSIR framework.

The second day of the workshop included a number of presentations by Russian and Norwegian speakers, which highlighted the topics of monitoring marine litter in the Barents Sea, relevant policy-making in the Arctic, and introduced the audience to the activities of the UArctic Thematic Network on Arctic Plastic Pollution.

The panel discussion on how to strengthen collaboration and mitigate the problem in Barents Sea area brought together experts from Russian and Norwegian institutions, UArctic and the Open University of Netherlands.

The workshop was a part of the Barents Sea Leadership on Marine Litter project, led by GRID-Arendal in collaboration with Northern (Arctic) Federal University (NarFU), the Kola Science Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences, UN Environment Programme and UArctic.

UArctic Thematic Network on Arctic Plastic Pollution is a circumpolar network consisting of 14 member organizations across the Arctic. The objective of the TN is to foster networking and exchange of knowledge and coordination amongst the experts of the many different disciplines that have a bearing on plastic pollution.

UArctic Research Office hosted by the Northern (Arctic) Federal University (NArFU) is supporting and developing international cooperation within the UArctic Thematic Networks and other UArctic activities.