At the Seminar 6 on "Regional knowledge sharing and identification of opportunities for enhanced reduction of Marine Plastics Debris" held during the ASEAN-Japan Environment Week during August 22-24, 2023, Hotta made a keynote presentation to provide discussion points for the following panel discussions. This seminar was orgnaized with the following background and purposes. East and Southeast Asian regions are recognised as the biggest contributors to marine plastic pollution due to rapid economic growth, unsustainable production and consumption patterns, and the lack of appropriate waste management infrastructure.ASEAN member states are also taking initiatives through regional and national policy responses including launching of ASEAN Regional Action Plan for Combating Marine Debris (2021-2025) and development of national action plans in respective countries.With an ongoing process for developing an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution through Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) in mind, this event aims to (1) share the progress made thus far in the region in its combat against marine plastic debris, (2) formulate a regional input to the INC process, and (3) explore the areas of future ASEAN-Japan collaboration at this commemorative year of ASEAN-Japan relations.

Introduction: The aim of this systematic review was to collect evidence and recommendations for the applicability of the concept of evidence-based policy making (EBPM) during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and to discuss the implementation of this concept from a medical science perspective. Methods: This study was performed according to the guidelines, checklist, and flow diagram of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020. An electronic literature search was conducted on September 20, 2022 using PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, and CINAHL databases with the following search terms: "evidence based policy making" and "infectious disease." Study eligibility assessment was performed based on the flow diagram of PRISMA 2020, and risk of bias assessment was performed using The Critical Appraisal Skills Program. Results: Eleven eligible articles were included in this review and divided into three groups as follows: early, middle, and late stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Basics of COVID-19 control were suggested in the early stage. The articles published in the middle stage discussed the importance of the collection and analysis of evidence of COVID-19 from around the world for the establishment of EBPM in the COVID-19 pandemic. The articles published in the late stage discussed the collection of large amounts of high-quality data and the development of methods to analyze them, as well as emerging issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusions: This study revealed that the concept of EBPM applicable to emerging infectious disease pandemics changed between the early, middle, and late stages of the pandemic. The concept of EBPM will play an important role in medicine in the future.

Microplastics (MPs) have been identified as an emerging soil pollutant and a global environmental concern. Scientists have recently paid attention to the contamination of soil by MPs as their detrimental impacts on soil systems are largely unknown. MPs are considered to be vectors for other soil contaminants, such as potentially toxic elements (PTEs) and organic contaminants. PTEs are persistent contaminants and are often released into soils in large quantities. MPs adsorb PTEs, mainly via electrostatic attraction and surface complexation, and increase their mobility in soils. These complexes can be easily absorbed by plants; hence, the accumulation of PTEs in plants can be enhanced in both microplastic and PTE-contaminated soils. Furthermore, there is a high risk of food chains contamination by PTEs due to crops grown in both microplastic and PTE-contaminated soils. Consequently, countermeasures including policy- and governance-based approaches that target circular economy as well as reduce, reuse, recycle (3R) applications are being discussed around the world to minimize the environmental contamination of MPs.

Ensuring sustainable consumption and production (SCP) patterns in the Asia region is a high-priority policy issue but challenged by a number of obstacles and the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. This article argues that not only conventional policy approaches but also alternative approaches are needed in Asia to decouple socio-economic development and increases in environmental loads from people’s sense of well-being. To achieve human and planetary well-being under the situation of compressed development, four strategic courses of SCP policy are presented. These four courses are SCP policy expansion, enhanced linkage of consumption and production (CP), system transition and bottom-up approaches. Policy makers in Asia should keep these courses of action in mind and utilize opportunities, 13 of which are outlined here, to mainstream SCP. The 13 SCP opportunities, the key words of which include among others experience, genuine wealth, local design, digitalization, infrastructure, indigenous wisdom, collaboration and challenges, indicate entry points for Asian SCP policy development in the 2020s. Finally, based on these, the authors have devised an SCP case matrix and produced 43 example SCP cases for better application of the suggested SCP policy approach in the Asian region.