Saly-Portudal (Mbour), Feb 14 (APS) – The Abidjan Convention on Community Marine Protected Areas (AMPC) should serve as an “instrument of cooperation” between the different countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific , advocated Monday the director of the environment and classified establishments, Baba Dramé.
”This protocol must be an instrument of cooperation between the various countries, within the framework of the implementation of their policies on Community marine protected areas”, he declared in particular.
He was speaking in Saly-Portudal (Mbour, west), at the opening of a capacity building workshop on multilateral environmental agreements in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, as part of of the Abidjan Convention.
He noted on this occasion that Senegal is one of the African countries that have put in place a “very ambitious policy” for the creation of AMPCs.
“Today, history has shown us that countries need to do more to create some kind of harmony between human beings and their natural environment. Because man is an animal creation, we are obliged to meet the minimum ecological conditions to be able to continue to evolve on earth,” he explained.
He recalled that most States have been committed for several years to the establishment of protected areas, through national parks, classified forests, among others.
”But, for some time now, it has seemed necessary to extend this classification policy to the level of maritime areas, which are very fragile ecosystems, which are home to extremely rare species and which are very useful on earth. This is why Senegal has created a network of AMPCs that covers the entire coastline, from north to south,” he said.
According to him, these marine protected areas now constitute sanctuaries of biodiversity where we conserve species which are very rare and which are considered to be of capital importance for the economic and social development of communities.
”Today, on the West African coast, there are a lot of activities (…) being developed which risk having a negative impact on these ecosystems, in particular oil and gas exploitation, but also the construction of maritime infrastructures, such as ports, etc.”, warned Mr. Dramé.
