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Come Saturday, February 2,
Jamaica will join the international community in celebrating World
Wetlands Day 2008 under the theme: “Healthy Wetlands, Healthy
People”. Thirty-seven years since the Convention on Wetlands was
signed in the Iranian city of Ramsar, this year also marks the
eleventh anniversary of the observation of World Wetlands Day as an
international awareness raising event. Jamaica will observe World
Wetlands Day by increasing consciousness of wetlands and their
importance to national development.
The National Environment and
Planning Agency (NEPA) and a number of its partner agencies,
including non-Governmental organisations (NGOs), have collaborated
to stage several important activities in honour of this milestone
environmental event. Customarily, a number of activities are
organized by the Contracting Parties to the Convention in an effort
to underline the importance of wetlands. This year is no different.
National attention will be
focused on the Black River Lower Morass in St. Elizabeth, this year,
to mark the tenth anniversary of the listing of the Black River as a
Wetland of International Importance by the Ramsar Convention. The
Convention on Wetlands is an inter-governmental cooperation for the
conservation and wise use of the wetlands and their resources.
NEPA will host a Wetlands Day
Educational Boat Tour of the Morass for students and teachers from
schools in the area. The tour gets underway at 9:00 a.m. In the
afternoon, NEPA will conduct a Sensitisation Workshop which will
afford fisher folk and other key stakeholders an opportunity to air
their concerns about the management of the Morass. The Workshop gets
underway at 1:00 p.m. Information garnered from the Workshop will
feed into the national plan for wetlands management in Jamaica.
National prominence of World
Wetlands Day activities will be enhanced courtesy of an Outside
Broadcast (OB) scheduled to be aired on POWER 106 FM from the Bridge
House Inn, the site of the Sensitisation Workshop. Segments of the
Black River Boat Tour will also be broadcast including also other
important messages about wetlands in Jamaica. Activities get
underway at 9:00 a.m. NEPA rounds out public education efforts
leading up to World Wetlands Day with a weeklong poster exhibition,
which began on Monday, January 28 at the St. Elizabeth Parish
Library.
Members of the University of
the West Indies, Mona Campus will join forces with students from the
Corporate Area and other interested stakeholders to replant
mangroves along the Palisadoes strip, on World Wetlands Day. The
activity gets underway at 8:00 a.m. and will be lead by the Port
Royal Marine Laboratory – Mangrove Replanting Port Royal Palisadoes
Area, an arm of the UWI.
The Natural History Division (NHD)
of the Institute of Jamaica (IOJ) will conduct educational tours of
the Mason River Protected Area for schools and community groups on
the border of Clarendon and St. Ann. A scheduled sensitization
workshop and display exhibition will supplement these
activities.
In Western Jamaica, the Montego
Marine Park Trust and the Urban Development Corporation (UDC)
collaborate to host a number of activities to increase awareness on
the importance of wetlands on World Wetlands Day. These include: a
Guided Boat Tour of the Marine Park, a World Wetlands Day exhibition
and a Public Presentation on the importance of wetlands, all of
which are scheduled for the Marine Park. Students and other
stakeholders have been invited to participate.
Further south, the
Caribbean-Coastal Area Management slightly departs from tradition by
participating in a school and community event on Sunday, February 3,
entitled: “Vere Emerging Stars Netball Rally and End of Project
Exposition”, scheduled for the Bustamante High School in
Clarendon. The event is a post-Hurricane Dean Project which was
funded by Oxford Family (Oxfam) Jamaica, a subsidiary of the
London-based Department for International Development. C-CAM will
round out activities for World Wetlands Day with an audio-visual
presentation on wetlands to be held at its offices. This is also
scheduled for February 3.
The Portland Environmental
Protection Agency (PEPA) will host a presentation on wetlands and
their importance at the Portland Parish Library on Saturday.
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