Grenada will host the second European Union-Caribbean Global Gateway conference on sargassum early next month.
Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell, as well as Felix Fernandez-Shaw, the Director of the European Commission, Directorate-General for International Partnership, will address the October 1-2 event being held under the theme “Turning the Tide: Sustainable Practices and Economic Opportunities for Sargassum in the Caribbean Basin”.
The conference is an initiative under Global Gateway, the European Union’s strategy to boost investments that generate smart, clean and secure value chains across the world.
The Barbados-based Delegation of the European Union said that since 2011, countries within the wider Caribbean basin have wrestled with the growing inundations of sargassum on their coasts.
It said that this phenomenon has a substantial economic impact in sectors like tourism and fisheries, and poses public health risks and the event in October will provide the estimated 250 delegates an opportunity “to drive dialogue, action and investment in Sargassum valorization and the development of value chains at scale to meet the magnitude of the challenge.
“The conference will generate a comprehensive conversation to understand the building blocks of a sustainable value chain: Research & Innovation, Enabling Environment and Transformation. The event will explore the latest on research, monitoring and forecasting, prevention and containment, collection and harvesting, treatment, valorization and/or use, and disposal of sargassum biomass,” it added.
It said that the October event will also bring together public authorities from Caribbean and Latin American countries and European Overseas Countries and Territories and Outermost Regions, as well as the private sector financing institutions, scientific community, and non/governmental organizations.
“It will connect the different actors to identify opportunities for investments and partnerships to support public initiative and commercial operations targeting the different stages of a Sargassum value chain.”
