More Efforts Geared Up Against Marine Pollution

Recently on June 28, 2022, the UN Environment Program (UNEP) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) launched the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Mediterranean Pollution Hot Spots Technical Assistance initiative (MeHSIP), the goal of which to curb pollution in the Mediterranean marine and coastal environment.

The Global Environment Facility is the biggest multilateral fund seeking to enable developing countries to invest in nature, and it sponsors the implementation of international environmental conventions on biodiversity, climate change, chemicals, and desertification. Since 1991, it has provided more than $21.7 billion in grants and dispensed an additional $119 billion in co-financing for more than 5,000 projects and programs. Through its Small Grants Program, the GEF has financed more than 26,000 civil society and community initiatives in 135 countries.

The MeHSIP, funded with USD 5 million, seeks to promote adequate water, wastewater, solid waste and industrial emissions management in the Southern Mediterranean region, thereby diminishing health risks and improving access to clean drinking water and sanitation services.

Vice President of the EIB, Ricardo Mourinho Félix, and Susan Gardner, Director of UNEP’s Ecosystems Division launched the initiative on the sidelines of the UN Oceans Conference in Lisbon. Both parties agreed to support preparation of priority investment projects to reduce pollution in the marine and coastal environments of the three Southern Mediterranean countries—Egypt, Lebanon and Tunisia.

“Untreated discharges of wastewater represent a major problem for Mediterranean ecosystems and the health of the population living in the region. Many large coastal cities still lack a wastewater treatment system, and many existing systems are based on outdated and inefficient technologies,” said Susan Gardner.

According to the 2021 State of Finance for Nature report (https://www.unep.org/resources/state-finance-nature), a total of USD 8.1 trillion is needed by 2050 to meet the world’s climate change, biodiversity and land degradation goals. The MeHSIP is a step forward toward reducing this gap.

The Mediterranean Basin is one of the world’s most popular seas, as it includes a vast set of coastal and marine ecosystems that provide valuable benefits to all of its 250 million coastal inhabitants. However, the Mediterranean Sea faces multiple pressures from human activities like chemical contamination, eutrophication, pollution by marine litter and over-exploitation.

The technical assistance provided under the MeHSIP will focus on assisting promoters with speeding up the preparation of financeable projects in the water and environment sectors that will address these pressures.

Ricardo Mourinho Felix, Vice-President of the European Investment Bank said: “The EIB is one of the largest lenders to the global water sector. I am pleased to intensify our long-standing cooperation with UNEP to support the de-pollution of the Mediterranean. It will contribute to the objectives of the Clean Ocean Initiative set up to improve the health of the oceans globally.”

The launch of the MeHSIP marks a step forward in achieving the commitments made at the 22nd Meeting of the Contracting Parties (COP 22) to the Barcelona Convention and its Protocols on regional measures to prevent and reduce pollution from wastewater treatment plants.