Plenary Speakers
Read about the confirmed plenary speakers for the SETAC World Congress.
Trisia Farrelly
Tuesday Plenary
Why Independent Local and Indigenous Science-Based Evidence and Expertise Are Crucial to Ending Plastic Pollution
Safe, sustainable and equitable solutions to the global plastic pollution crisis will require contributions from a wide range of experts, including independent scientists, citizen scientists, Indigenous peoples, waste pickers, and front line and fence line communities.
The science-policy interface (SPI) is the process by which scientific knowledge informs and shapes policy, primarily by facilitating knowledge exchanges between scientists and policymakers. Guidance from all plastics experts will be needed for an equitable evidence-based SPI for the global plastics treaty to drive material, technical and systems innovations and a just transition toward a safer, more equitable, and more sustainable and transparent circular global economy.
The success of the global plastics treaty will depend on the effectiveness of its SPI, and the success of its SPI will rest on its participatory, inclusivity, transparency, and conflict of interest mitigation policies and processes. Based on these principles and policies, the SPI could support the universal human rights to science; access information; a clean, healthy and sustainable environment; and Indigenous rights including data sovereignty.
About Trisia Farrelly
Professor Farrelly (ONZM, FRG) is the Coordinator of the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty, Senior Scientist at Cawthron Institute, and Honorary Fellow at Massey University in New Zealand. Farrelly sat on the UN’s Scientific Advisory Committee for plastics in 2018, and she is technical advisor to Pacific Islands countries for the plastics treaty. She is a Senior Editor, Cambridge Prisms Plastics, and in 2021 she wrote the edited book titled “Plastic Legacies: Pollution, Persistence, and Politics.” Farrelly has received two university medals and several national awards including Excellence in Product Stewardship and New Zealand Women of Influence finalist for the environment category. Last year, she was made a King’s Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for Services to Ecology.