7 News Belize

Combatting Marine Waste
posted (September 4, 2019)
The Department of the Environment along with its UK partners officially launched what is called the Belize Marine Litter Action plan. A ceremony was held at the Radisson this morning to commemorate the new plan. Courtney Weatherburne has more.

Courtney Weatherburne reporting
Unfortunately for many, throwing garbage on the ground is like breathing - there isn't a second thought before disposing of it, nor an afterthought when it is done.

Of course, some of that garbage ends up in the landfills and dump sites while a lot of it ends up on beaches and in the sea - that is when it becomes an even bigger problem.

The Department of the Environment along with UK's Center for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science among other partners launched Belize's first Marine Litter Action Plan to address this grave and growing issue.

Martin Alegria, Chief Environmental Officer, DOE
"The marine litter action plan initiative is a commonwealth initiative under the financing or stewardship of the UK Department of Environment and so they in their 2018 commonwealth meeting they came up with priorities on environment and marine litter was one and so they decided let's see what we can do to help the earth in terms of this type of issue because it is becoming a grave concern so they looked at four areas or four regions of the world that they would want to address, the first one like I mentioned was the pacific which the finished, the second was the Caribbean which when they went through the history of the countries they realized Belize is the one they want to work with in order to spring board to the region CARICOM."

Courtney Weatherburne:
"What are the specifics of this action plan, how can residents see it work out on the ground level?"

Martin Alegria
"We have in 5 components, one is public awareness, we need to consolidate, integrate and have one main message or a set of same messages rather than NGO's private sector and governments having their own."

"A second one is the science behind because to make policy and to pass laws you need the science behind it."

"The other one is sea based marine litter generation or pollution. This I what we call ship generated waste, marine litter. Right now in the territory of Belize the cargo ships that come to Belize are small, the cruise ships are medium but the bigger part of it is those that are going up and down our coast. How do we address that generated waste that perhaps they dump along affecting our barrier reef? The 4th one is land based sources of marine pollution and that is where we Belizeans need to be very much involved."

"And another component is policy and law without policy and law and enforcement of those laws it is something we are skidding in the same spot so that is another component."

The action plan is set to run for 5 to 10 years and it will surely take a collaborative effort to reduce the generation of marine litter and better protect our vulnerable undersea ecosystems.

It took the team about 5 months to finalize the action plan. After Belize's action plan is realized, the UK group will move on to South Africa and Asia to implement similar projects.

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