Relevance
In the Caribbean, over the past four decades, environmental degradation and unsustainable use of natural resources have brought negative consequences for sustainable socio-economic growth and for people’s livelihoods and wellbeing. The tourism, agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and mineral and hydrocarbon extraction sectors all involve activities that involve the direct exploitation of Caribbean countries’ natural resources, with adverse effects on environmental quality.Mismanagement of chemicals including synthetic pesticides throughout their life cycle pose a threat to people and their sensitive ecosystems.
MEAs are useful instruments to address these problems and support improvement in environmental performance at national, regional and international levels. Caribbean countries, recognising this, are Parties to and strong supporters of numerous MEAs. However, there still remains an implementation deficit in terms of MEA commitments in the region. Many countries have not fully incorporated the provisions of MEAs in national legislation, due to a shortage of the relevant legal capacity. Specific action plans to address the main issues are frequently lacking or inappropriately addressed at the national level including strengthening the pesticide life cycle management and promotion of alternatives to highly hazardous pesticides. The considerable reporting requirements imposed by MEAs can be burdensome for focal agencies with small staff complements and limited knowledge management capacities. Lack of human resources is a major challenge to MEAs implementation and enforcement, and this challenge is aggravated by the lack of financial resources to support MEAs action. Arrangements to facilitate intra-regional information exchange and exploration of common positions and shared experiences are also in need of improvement.
The ACP-MEAs programme in the Caribbean seeks to overcome these challenges by building technical capacity, facilitating regional information sharing and consensus building, supporting synergistic implementation and promoting strategic mainstreaming of MEAs.