A gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial from Be­lize says the is­sue of sar­gas­sum in the Caribbean is one that can make its way to the Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change sum­mit in Brazil

Be­lize’s Min­is­ter of Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment, Cli­mate Change and Sol­id Waste Man­age­ment, Or­lan­do Ha­bet, made the com­ment here at the Glob­al Bio­di­ver­si­ty Al­liance Sum­mit in George­town, Guyana.

Record amounts of sar­gas­sum sea­weed have been wash­ing ashore on Caribbean beach­es. It has caused is­sues for fish­er­men, coastal com­mu­ni­ties and tourism in the re­gion. There have been many eco­nom­ic and en­vi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences for the is­lands. The Caribbean Sea and parts of the At­lantic Ocean have ex­pe­ri­enced a record-break­ing sar­gas­sum in­flux with near­ly 38 mil­lion met­ric tons ob­served in May, ac­cord­ing to a new re­port by the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da’s Op­ti­cal Oceanog­ra­phy Lab­o­ra­to­ry.

Last week, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed the wind­ward coast of To­ba­go was un­der siege from sar­gas­sum sea­weed.

As the in­flux on­ly gets worse, Ha­bet yes­ter­day said the is­sue of sar­gas­sum would make for an in­ter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion at the Unit­ed Na­tions’ 30th Con­fer­ence of Par­ties set to kick off in Belem, Brazil from No­vem­ber 10. He said it starts at the Caribbean lev­el, ex­plain­ing, “I think I will be do­ing fi­nance at this next COP and then oth­er min­is­ters take up dif­fer­ent the­mat­ic ar­eas. Maybe we need to have more meet­ings and to share more in­for­ma­tion about what we re­al­ly want.

“You’re see­ing what’s hap­pen­ing right now in the Caribbean, hu­mon­gous mats of sar­gas­sum are af­fect­ing our coun­tries. It is cer­tain­ly af­fect­ing our tourism, our fish­eries and even the equip­ment be­cause the boats get af­fect­ed al­so. It is ap­par­ent­ly some­thing that we can’t do and work and solve on our own.”

It won’t be the first time sar­gas­sum is tak­en on at the Con­fer­ence of Par­ties (COP) lev­el. Two years ago, Ha­bet, along with the en­vi­ron­ment min­is­ter from the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, brought up the is­sue at COP. “What that did was to start to get some of the oth­er first-world na­tions to see how they can help. They start­ed to build equip­ment to see how they can break it down and use it. Some were talk­ing con­ver­sion to en­er­gy, con­ver­sion to biochar for fer­tilis­ers and every­thing else.”

Ha­bet said the prob­lem is the “huge mud” that is com­ing in and how to avoid the sar­gas­sum from reach­ing the shores of the re­gion. “Once it reach­es the shores, it’s too late, then the cleanup has al­ready af­fect­ed your fish­es, your man­groves and every­thing else,” he fur­ther ex­plained.

The min­is­ter said even if the is­sue of sar­gas­sum doesn’t end up on the agen­da of COP, the re­gion should seek in­ter­na­tion­al help and sup­port at the glob­al con­fer­ence. He added, “I’m not cer­tain if every­body will do it, but I think that we can find and forge part­ner­ships with na­tions. Maybe not in the ne­go­ti­at­ing rooms, but cer­tain­ly with bi­lat­er­al meet­ings with some of these coun­tries, we can do that.”

How­ev­er, Ha­bet was adamant that the is­sue de­serves to be high on the agen­da at the UN con­fer­ence.

“The ef­fect that it is hav­ing on our tourism, on our GDP is sub­stan­tial. Take that apart from, as I men­tioned, the oth­er ef­fects it has. But it is al­so for us to ad­dress with some of the na­tions who are po­ten­tial­ly the ones who are caus­ing these huge mats of sar­gas­sum to flow in­to our shores.”

As To­ba­go con­tin­ues to bat­tle the sar­gas­sum in­flux, help is ar­riv­ing in the form of spe­cialised equip­ment promised un­der a US$25 mil­lion Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme ini­tia­tive.

The pack­age in­cludes 1,000 me­tres of sar­gas­sum boom, an alu­mini­um barge with a con­vey­or belt, bas­kets, trucks, lifts, and main­te­nance equip­ment.