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On April 2, 2004, environment ministers from Ecuador, Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica signed the ‘San José Declaration’ in the Costa Rican capital to cooperate in the conservation and sustainable use of their Pacific waters in something they called the Marine Corridor. of the Eastern Tropical Pacific (CMAR). It was the beginning of a long story, without anyone thinking that it would become the largest block of marine protected areas in the world.
Dozens of governments, crises, environmental political ups and downs, a pandemic and summits on climate or, more recently, on the protection of the oceans that cover more than 70% of the planetary surface have passed. That proposal even languished, but 20 years later it emerges as an example of what is possible at a time of acceleration of international agreements for the management of marine areas that function as a critical factor in climate change.
Financial organizations, private funds, conservation networks and governments managed to avoid the fading that many feared at the beginning and now present the CMAR as a consolidated project to protect with international aid some 500,000 square kilometers of seas in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, in an area of high diversity. biological society that knows no borders and faces the same threats of pollution, illegal fishing and destruction of ecosystems. It is a corridor that connects Cocos Island (Costa Rica), the Galapagos archipelago (Ecuador), Coiba Island (Panama) and the Malpelo and Gorgona islands, in Colombia, but above all it involves multinational action for a common area , as happens on land in the Amazon, without each country losing sovereignty over its territory.
The opportunity to show their progress to multiple international delegations was ideal just this weekend in San José, at the High Level Event on Ocean Action ‘Immersed in Change’, preparatory to the Ocean Summit to be held in Nice in June 2025. In alliance with the Government of France, which has marked marine protection as a priority, Costa Rica tries to become a space for accelerating the so-called “blue agenda” that for many years “has been left out of the international discussion.” ”, as the French Secretary of State in charge of the Sea and Biodiversity, Hervé Berville, said during his visit to the conference. The CMAR is, therefore, an example of the feasible path from this area rich in fishing production and transit of aquatic mammals.
“It is a particular project, or a rarity, because it has been going on for two decades and has been dying, but now it is strong,” Marco Quesada, vice president of Oceans in the Americas Division, of Conservation International (CI), tells EL PAÍS. “It is beginning to take off, to take shape, although not yet at cruising speed. It is a model that can be replicated elsewhere,” adds Alicia Montalvo, manager of Climate Action and Positive Biodiversity at CAF-development bank of Latin America and the Caribbean. “At this peak moment, we can say that these are the first four countries in the world to achieve a binding agreement to meet the goal of protecting at least 30% of their seas before 2030,” adds Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, who as Minister of the Environment of Costa Rica in 2004, drafted the ‘San José Declaration’ and is now executive director of the Global Environment Facility (GEF).
![Tourists travel on a boat in Isla Coiba National Park (Panama).](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/XF7B4JC6IFFNZMFQV5Q33GSLNA.jpg?auth=439b4437ffc80ef714a08281b087368a639fe964bf6443293e2b75f5f5333d0e&width=414)
The GEF confirmed this Thursday a contribution of 16 million dollars that must be complemented with counterparts four times greater than the four governments committed to seeking among their own resources or donor organizations, now that the financing of actions against climate change is also part of the global discussion. The commitment was firm with the projection that execution will begin at the end of 2024, but the work ahead is arduous. “It is positive that environmental financing has advanced rapidly in the last 10 years, but it is still a small group and must be addressed in much greater depth (…) As the ocean has not been sufficiently valued, Finance ministers often do not fully understand the blue economy,” Montalvo acknowledged from CAF, which in 2022 contributed $1 million in technical cooperation to the formal structure of the CMAR.
Financing climate action is just one of the ingredients on the agenda of the conference in San José, whose success will only be guaranteed, according to Berville, if progress is made in achieving support from countries in instruments such as the Marine Biodiversity Agreement for the High Seas (BBNJ), on the preservation and sustainable management of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdictions. The treaty was adopted a year ago after more than a decade of negotiations, but its entry into force requires ratification by at least 60 nations. He also mentioned the need to strengthen compliance with the goal of protecting 30% of each country’s sea and the fight against mining on the ocean floor, as well as reducing plastic pollution.
Latin America is trying to take the lead in this global discussion, warns the CAF spokesperson, and the CMAR project demonstrates this by creating a structure that reduces the risk caused by political changes that are not unusual on the continent. Rodríguez agrees with this, recognizing the commitment of the current governments despite volatile positions in the past. “They do it at a time when international donations are escalating to another level and there is great interest in learning from collaboration models, as is being seen in this conference,” added the former Costa Rican minister, while still recognizing the priority of the host government. of Rodrigo Chaves on ocean matters, despite signs of change in the environmentalist tradition of the small country that Emmanuel Macron pointed out this Friday as a source of global inspiration.
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