Poluição plástica e mudanças climáticas: estressores ecossistêmicos intrinsecamente ligados

Abstract

Humanity is currently facing an unprecedented polycrisis, where anthropogenic pressures on planetary systems have reached a scale and intensity resulting in abrupt and undeniable environmental changes. These environmental disturbances, such as plastic pollution and climate change, have mostly been addressed as isolated or even opposing issues. However, this approach overlooks the nonlinear interactions between these stressors and their cumulative effects on the Earth's system. Therefore, this work aims to evaluate how the academic community has explored the interrelationships between plastic pollution and climate change, identifying and analyzing the main approaches and their evolution over time. Through a systematic literature review using the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection, 909 publications were analyzed, covering the period from 2006 to 2024, using the keywords: ("Plastic pollution" OR microplastics OR "synthetic polymer") AND ("climate change" OR "global warming" OR "extreme weather"). Among the analyzed articles, 20.5% directly addressed the interconnections between these two ecosystem stressors, while 43.3% mentioned such interactions indirectly. Only 0.44% explicitly investigated the absence of connections between plastic pollution and climate change, while 1% did so incidentally. Additionally, 34.8% of the publications did not explore any relationship between the two topics. The exponential growth in the number of publications over the years suggests a scientific evolution towards a conceptual integration of these stressors, increasingly studied as interrelated elements within a global system. However, there remains a significant gap in studies directly addressing the broad spectrum of synergistic interactions between plastic pollution and climate change. Addressing these issues and their cumulative effects requires a holistic and integrated approach. This study identifies trends, gaps, and opportunities for future research, promoting a deeper understanding of these stressors as interconnected components of a single global system.