Panama City.- Panama and the United States have joined forces to promote a regional project that creates an “ecological maritime corridor” in order to increase the protection of the oceans, announced this Thursday the US special presidential envoy for Climate, John Kerry. , in the eighth session of the Our Ocean conference”, which is held in the Panamanian capital.
“Just today, for example, we are pleased to announce, with both Panama and Fiji and the Pacific Blue Shipping Partnership, we are engaging in technical cooperation to help facilitate green shipping corridors in our regions,” Kerry said during his speech at the opening of the event.
At the global conference, Kerry added, “The United States is highlighting 77 ads, from 8 agencies and offices, valued at almost $6 billion.”
“We are facing the most important challenge that human beings have ever faced. The climate crisis and the ocean crisis are the same. “We cannot fully address one without the other,” Kerry declared in his speech, in which he placed special emphasis on accelerating the move to renewable energy.
The United States embassy in Panama explained that both countries have the “intention of establishing technical cooperation tables to facilitate the creation of an ecological maritime corridor.”
Panama and the US seek to “carry out a feasibility project that helps explore the potential of this type of corridors in the region,” since “they are key to the early adoption of zero-emission fuels.”
As well as “technologies that place the shipping sector towards the goal of limiting global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius (274.65 degrees Kevin),” explains the official letter.
According to the embassy, “if completed it would be a pioneering project in the region” because it would use “the parameters of the Ecological Maritime Corridors Initiation Program announced during COP27”, which are aligned with the objectives of the World Maritime Organization.
Our Ocean Conference
Panama brings together politicians, researchers, activists and the private sector between this Thursday and Friday to discuss measures and solutions to protect the oceans.
This series of conferences, initiated in 2014 by Kerry, will focus on six axes of action: marine protected areas, marine security, blue economy, sustainable fishing, climate change, and marine pollution.
The aim is to agree on actions aimed at protecting the oceans from marine pollution, climate change and acidification, among other threats, and thus guarantee responsible management of marine resources, as well as sustainable economic growth, said the Panamanian Foreign Ministry.
At that event, Panama announced that it had expanded the protection of its exclusive economic zone by up to 54% with the expansion to more than 93,000 square kilometers of the Banco Volcán marine reserve, located in the Caribbean and created in 2015 with just 14,000 square kilometers. thus marking a milestone in the matter.
