30 Years of Innovation and Excellence: GRID-Arendal Annual Report 2019

Gathering knowledge about marine litter in West Africa

In 2019, GRID-Arendal made great strides in gathering local, national, and regional knowledge about the challenge of marine litter along Africa’s Atlantic coast. Information about marine litter in this region is not widely published or accessible, so expert knowledge needs to be tapped and turned into published products. To this end, GRID-Arendal teamed up with UNEP, the Abidjan Convention Secretariat, and other partners to invite experts, stakeholders, and policymakers to workshops on marine litter. Experts from 23 countries participated in three sub-regional workshops held in Ghana, Morocco, and Namibia. The valuable knowledge shared at these workshops will be made publicly available in 2020 via a desktop study, which will then inform the development of the West Africa Marine Litter

KEY NUMBERS

3

West African countries where we convened workshops on marine litter

23

number of countries represented among the workshop attendees

Regional Action Plan that has been called for by the UN Environment Assembly. GRID-Arendal is also producing a set of seven scientific papers on different aspects of marine litter challenges in Africa.

Children on a littered beach in Joal, Senegal.

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