Welcome to the PEMSEA Blue Economy Bulletin for April 2021. This month, PEMSEA and partners held a virtual training workshop on claims and compensation for oil spills from ships. This training is part of PEMSEA's technical assistance to implement the Gulf of Thailand (GOT) Framework Programme and Strategic Action Plan 2017-2021. Check out information on the upcoming East Asian Seas (EAS) Congress 2021. The Congress proper, which will be held in December, will be preceded by a series of online events starting from June 2021. For more information, please visit the EAS Congress 2021 website. PEMSEA has announced the winners of the EAS Futures Youth and the Oceans Photo Competition and the deadline of the EAS Futures Youth Video Competition has been extended to 1 September 2021.
In coastal and marine news through East Asia and elsewhere, a new report found that Southeast Asian countries could potentially unlock significant value through better recycling of plastic waste. Viet Nam committed to tackling plastic pollution through its announcement as co-convenor of a Ministerial Conference on Marine Litter and Plastic Pollution. Likewise, UNEP and Google announced to fight plastic pollution together by applying citizen science and machine learning.
A webinar series on Conservation Financing emphasized the importance of sustainable management on biodiversity and discussed the potential efforts to augment revenue and diversify funding sources to finance conservation. Through puppetry and stories, an Indonesian environmentalist draws national attention to the importance of mangrove conservation. A study by the World Economic Forum suggests freshwater fish farms are potentially a more sustainable alternative to farming at sea, bolstering food security with fewer economic and resource constraints.
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