Panos Caribbean is part of the Communications Partnership of the IWEco Project.
“The Caribbean is the second most plastic-contaminated sea in the world after the Mediterranean Sea. Estimations of the volume of plastic waste in this area range from 600 to 1,414 plastic items per square kilometer in different locations.”
Report on Status of Styrofoam and Plastic Bag Bans in the Wider Caribbean
UNEP – Caribbean Environment Programme, May 2019
On 31st July 2019, the Global Environment Facility-funded Integrating Water, Land and Ecosystems Management in Caribbean Small Island Developing States (GEF IWEco) Project, launches a short video which takes a lighter look at the issue of marine litter and asks everyone around the world to break-up with single-use plastics.
You can view the video here: https://youtu.be/j0FHWQSAP1M
In the Caribbean, plastic waste makes up a large proportion of debris reaching the sea from sources on land. In the ocean it harms marine life, threatens ecosystems, health and the region’s tourism-based economy. Plastic pollution not only diminishes the natural beauty for which the islands are known; it also compromises the role of the ocean as a provider of food, other resources, and livelihoods.
In February 2017, the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) launched the #CleanSeas Campaign to engage governments, the public, civil society, and the private sector in the fight against marine plastic litter. It aimed to address the root-cause of marine litter by targeting the production and consumption of non-recoverable and single-use plastic by engaging citizens to address the problem in their daily lives. More than anything else, #CleanSeas aims to highlight the scale of the problem.
By April 2019, nine countries in the Wider Caribbean Region had joined sixty other nations in the #CleanSeas Campaign. These were Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Colombia, Costa Rica, Grenada, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Saint Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Read more ...In this latest Panos Caribbean's Voices for Climate Change Education PSA, ambassadors City Lock, Donn Gass and Rebellion share why climate change is their business, and should be yours too!
This video is made possible thanks to partners: the Planning Institute of Jamaica and the Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience - Jamaica's Climate Data and Information Management Project.