Lined with beautiful, swaying trees, the Imus River gives life to a community in Cavite. Millions of Asian villages are situated along similar rivers and streams. (PRF)

Funded by the Government of Norway, Project ASEANO is led by the Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA) and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) Indonesia in close collaboration with the PEMSEA Resource Facility and ASEAN Secretariat under the purview of the endorsing ASEAN sectoral body, the ASEAN Working Group on Coastal and Marine Environment (AWGCME).

The main goal of the ASEANO project is to build capacity to tackle plastic pollution from key sources in the ASEAN region through improved knowledge on sources, releases, transport, plus the ultimate fate of plastic pollution. The project promotes the development of sound and sustainable measures to reduce the impacts of plastic pollution and their implications on socioeconomic development and the environment. It focuses on the local level, with the Philippines' Imus River and Indonesia's Citarum River as its two Southeast Asian project sites.

The results of the project will be synthesized into knowledge products (LGU toolkit, policy best practices handbook, monitoring tools and technologies for plastics management, etc.) that can be used as a reference by local governments across the ASEAN region with similar priority management concerns.

Please have fun with our interactive map to understand the challenges and solutions needed to clean up Asia's rivers.