KINGSTON, Jamaica, Dec. 05, 2014, CNS – Representatives of 23 countries will meet in Colombia next week to review progress and achievements of the Cartagena Convention and its Protocols over the last two years in particular.
In 1983, the nations of the Wider Caribbean Region (WCR) adopted the Convention for the Protection and Development of the Marine Environment.
This was in response to growing concerns about the state of the marine environment and the vulnerability of the Caribbean Sea to pollution and habitat degradation.
The seventies had been marked by a series of oil spills and other pollution incidents which highlighted the vulnerability of Caribbean ecosystems, economies and ways of life. It was recognised that urgent collective action was needed.
In response, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) established the Caribbean Environment Programme (CEP) in 1981 within the framework of its Regional Seas Programme.
It was developed taking into consideration the importance and value of the WCR’s fragile and vulnerable coastal and marine ecosystems, including an abundance of mainly endemic flora and fauna. The trans-boundary nature of events such as oil spills at sea also underlined the need for more collaborative approaches and responses.
The Cartagena Convention was at the time, and remains, the first and only regionally binding treaty of its kind that seeks to protect and develop the marine environment of the WCR.
It is both a legal and an implementing framework; an important instrument for sustainable development in the Region. It essentially outlines the threats to the continued development of the Caribbean Sea and the actions needed to help protect it.
The Convention is supported by three protocols: the first deals with Oil Spills; the second is designed to conserve biodiversity (Specially Protected Areas and Wildlife); and the third addresses the problem of Land-based Sources of Marine Pollution (referred to as the LBS Protocol).
