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Panamanian environmentalists urge citizens and authorities to take action to protect the oceans

by the Civil Society Initiative for the Environment (ISCA)


The Civil Society Initiative for the Environment (ISCA), a coalition of 10 civic organizations, warns of the grave deterioration of Panama's coasts and oceans. The health of marine ecosystems is threatened, and affected with them is the quality of life for all the living things that depend upon the oceans.

The most significant problems that lead to the progressive and critical deterioration of the seas are:

• The great variety of solid and chemical wastes that are daily dumped in dangerous quantities onto our beaches and into our rivers and oceans;

• Indiscriminate logging of forests, which increases the sedimentation in bays, beaches and seas;

• Fishing with drift nets, or in prohibited areas, or in marine reserves;

• Submarine and coastal sand mining;

• Our local authorities' support of whaling;

• The presidential veto of the Coiba National Park law;

• The transit through our territorial waters of ships carrying spent nuclear fuel or other highly radioactive wastes;

• Coral mining, which destroys centuries of nature's work and places oceanic biodiversity at grave risk;

• The government's support for projects that emit pollutants that contribute to global warming, thus affecting the oceans, their coral ecosystems and biodiversity; and

• The grave consequences that all of the above will have on populations and economies that depend on marine and coastal resources for their subsistence.

We thus call upon citizens and the authorities to do these things to protect our oceans:

• Participate in underwater and beach cleanings;

• Learn about and practice sustainable fishing methods;

• Recycle garbage;

• Choose foods and beverages in reusable packages;

• Promote electrical generation technologies that are renewable and clean;

• When a tourist, pick hotels with technologies that treat or eliminate wastewater pollution;

• Assume your civic resposibility by participating in discussions and debates about projects and in favor of lwas that promote the protection of natural and social resources in a sustainable manner.
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