WWF applauds new marine conservation push in coastal East Africa as ministers and officials from ten countries and territories in East Africa endorsed or signed off on a potentially far-reaching protocol to protect East Africa’s coastal and marine environment from land-based activities and pollution. WWF press release informed that the new protocol – five years in the making – makes the western Indian Ocean the third marine area of the world to achieve a multilateral agreement to limit and control land-based impacts on the marine environment, after the Mediterranean (1980) and Wider Caribbean (1999).
Dr Amani Ngusaru, head of WWF’s Coastal East Africa Marine Programme, told that the new protocol is at right time and it will help saving one of the few remaining areas of the world that are still unspoilt. He further said that over 60 million people in eastern and southern Africa live and depend on the goods and services provided by the coastal and marine ecosystems of coastal east Africa.
Dr Ngusaru told that however, the resources of coastal East Africa are coming more and more under threat from rapid population growth, increased resource exploitation, unplanned development and climate change. The signing of the protocol followed nine demonstration projects focusing on dissemination of technologies and approaches for the sustainable management and protection of the marine ecosystems. A waste management demonstration project and a soil erosion control, both using indigenous vegetation, were implemented in Mauritius.
