Minister Without Portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, Senator the Hon. Matthew Samuda, has called for integration and coordination among Caribbean countries and Mexico in tackling the issue of sargassum bloom which affects many countries of the region.
“The biggest opportunity that has come up to tackle this problem is the opportunity for integration and coordination…Even though many of us are proceeding and investing in our academic capacity to do the research in terms of usage and best practices for handling this material, the real opportunity is going to come from our coordination. Coordination on early warning systems, coordination in data systems”, stated Minister Samuda.
Minister Samuda was participating in a panel discussion at the second session of the Greater Caribbean – EU Regional Conference on Sargassum, today (June 15, 2023), in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Pointing to the massive costs associated with the removal, storage, and processing of sargassum bloom, Minister Samuda asserted that the countries of the region must look at the mechanisms for finance.
“The amount is one issue. GCF generally tries to fund climate additionality, but this is now a major impact. We are going to have to target the Adaptation Fund as a region with a very detailed, well-thought-out proposal to get them behind us. We don’t have a lot of time. The reality is…the 2030 impact is likely to be way worse than the current impact”, the Minister declared.
Minister Samuda noted that although Jamaica had not experienced the level of sargassum as its neighbours in the region, the northeastern and south-central parts of the island had been affected the worst.
“Where we’ve had the greatest impact has actually been in our fisheries sector, so we continue to explore the varying mechanisms for early detection and for supporting our fishers. We’ve had to give social support where they’ve had reduced fishing, but we have not engaged in mass harvesting or wide-scale harvesting of the sargassum” the Minister explained.
He added that with warming ocean temperatures and with particular (ocean) currents, within the next two to three years Jamaica could experience sargassum bloom on the level of other countries in the region. As such, the country is looking at the commercial scale opportunities that will create the economic ability to remove sargassum.
The Greater Caribbean – EU Regional Conference on Sargassum brings together, the authorities that manage the coastlines of the Caribbean basin and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as the scientific and private communities, non-governmental organizations, and actors involved in research, monitoring, prevention, containment, use, treatment, recovery, and disposal of sargassum biomass.
Sargassum is a brown marine alga that is generally found in the Sargasso Sea of the Atlantic Ocean; it is a free-floating seaweed that does not attach to the ocean floor and its movements depend solely on ocean currents.
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