With so much of the region battling poverty, it’s only logical that concern for the environment fell by the wayside for much of the Eastern Caribbean in recent history, but now “our day of reckoning has come,” said Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States Director General Dr. Didacus Jules Tuesday evening.
Faced with that grim reality, the OECS is “committed to taking definitive action” to combat the impacts of climate change, Dr. Jules said at the opening ceremony for the first meeting of the OECS Council of Ministers of Environmental Sustainability.
So what sort of action might be taken by the nine-state group? Sir Richard Branson hopes they will create an international marine protection area.
“They can join together in creating a massive marine reserve, either, say, 25 or 50 miles from the shore — further out than local fishermen will ever go — and it could be 25 [miles] out to the 200-miles limit,” Sir Richard said.
He explained that the move would prevent “big foreign trawlers and long liners from decimating the fish stocks.”
He added that the move also would “enhance overall resilience” for all the states and lead to “much better fishing within the 25 miles off the shore.”
Sir Richard said that “brave governments” could go a step further and declare all their coral reefs protected marine areas, which he said would “set an example to bigger nations.”
See the Oct. 2, 2014 edition for full coverage.
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