A multimillion-dollar project aimed at cutting pollution in the western Indian Ocean was launched in Madagascar this week, South Africa’s deputy minister of environment said on Friday.
The three-year project, funded by the Global Environment Facility and the government of Norway, is expected to help eight countries, including South Africa, devise plans to curb sewage, chemicals and other pollutants coming from the land into the region’s rivers and coastal waters.
The project is expected to strengthen pollution laws and regulations, as well as cooperation regionally and nationally, a statement issued from Pretoria by Deputy Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Joyce Mabudafhasi said.
Measures include improving the safe disposal of waste and the siting of rubbish tips and developing wetlands to filter naturally and detoxify sewage.
The launch took place on Wednesday during a three-day conference of the Parties to the Nairobi Convention.
The convention is a regional mechanism through which global treaties can be implemented.
The project also fits into the wider issues of the United Nations’s Millennium Development Goals.
The wildlife-rich western Indian Ocean is thought to hold more than 11 000 species of plants and animals in the mainland countries of Kenya, Mozambique, Somalia, South Africa and Tanzania and on the islands of the Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion and the Seychelles.
About 30-million people are thought to depend on the area’s marine and coastal resources for food, livelihoods and recreation.
The western Indian Ocean is suffering as a result of unplanned urbanisation, discharges of untreated sewage, habitat destruction, destructive fishing practices and the over-exploitation of resources, Mabudafhasi said. — Sapa