POLLUTION-BUSTING PROJECT UNVEILED FOR WESTERN INDIAN OCEAN

POLLUTION-BUSTING PROJECT UNVEILED FOR WESTERN INDIAN OCEAN

Clean Up of Coastal Waters Offers New Hope to Region’s People and Wildlife

(Reissued as received.)

ANTANANARIVO/NAIROBI, 6 July (UNEP) -- A multi-million-dollar project aimed at cutting pollution in the Western Indian Ocean was announced today at a meeting of environment ministers in the Madagascar capital of Antananarivo.

The three-year project, funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the Government of Norway, will help eight countries devise action plans to curb sewage, chemicals and other pollutants coming from the land into the region's rivers and coastal waters.

The Western Indian Ocean is one of the most wildlife-rich in the world with important mangrove forests, seagrass beds, lagoons and coral reefs.

The ocean is thought to hold more than 11,000 species of plants and animals, including such creatures as the dugong, a marine mammal believed to be the inspiration for sea-farers tales of mermaids; the coelacanth, a fossil fish; and more than a fifth of the world's tropical inshore fish species.

It is also home to nesting sites for an estimated 70 per cent of the globe's marine turtles.

Some 30 million people in the five mainland countries of Kenya, Mozambique, Somalia, South Africa and the United Republic of Tanzania and on the islands of the Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion and Seychelles, are thought to depend upon the area's marine and coastal resources for food, livelihoods and recreation.

However, in common with many areas of the developing world, the Western Indian Ocean is suffering as a result of factors including unplanned urbanization, discharges of untreated sewage, habitat destruction, destructive fishing practices and overexploitation of resources.

The new $11 million project, which is being implemented by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), will strengthen pollution laws, regulations and cooperation regionally and nationally.

Measures likely to form part of the national action plans include improving the safe disposal of wastes, improving the siting of rubbish tips, developing wetlands to naturally filter and detoxify sewage and improved recycling schemes.

The project is being announced at the Fourth Conference of the Parties to the Nairobi Convention for the Protection, Management and Development of the Marine and Coastal Environment of the Eastern African Region.

The Convention is a regional mechanism established by UNEP through which global treaties and agreements, including the Global Programme of Action for the Protection of the Marine Environment from land-based activities (UNEP/GPA) and those relating to the International Maritime Organization (IMO), can be implemented.

Notes to Editors:

The Fourth Conference of the Parties to the Nairobi Convention will take place from 6 to July.

The new project, entitled "Addressing Land-Based Activities in the Western Indian Ocean Region (WIO-LAB)", covers eight East African countries.  These are the Comoros, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles, Somalia, South Africa and the United Republic of Tanzania.

The project fits into the wider issue of the UN's Millennium Development Goals as they relate to poverty eradication, the provision of drinking water and hunger reduction, as well as the environmental component of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation of the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

For more information, please contact:  Eric Falt Spokesperson/Director of UNEP's Division of Communications and Public Information, in Nairobi, on tel: +254-20-623292, mobile: +254-733-682656, e-mail: eric.falt@unep.org; or Nick Nuttall, UNEP Head of Media, on tel: +254-20-623084, mobile: +254-733-632755, e-mail: nick.nuttall@unep.org

In New York, please contact Jim Sniffen, Information Officer, UNEP, at tel: +1-212-963-8094/8210, e-mail: info@nyo.unep.org, www.nyo.unep.org

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