by Brian Major
Last updated: 3:41 PM ET, Mon July 1, 2019
Five Caribbean countries and territories have achieved aggressive marine protection initiative targets identified under the Caribbean Challenge Initiative (CCI), in which the five regional islands share membership.
The Dominican Republic, St. Kitts and Nevis, the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Haiti have all established marine protection for at least 20 percent of their marine and coastal environments ahead of the 2020 goal established under CCI's "20-by-20 Conservation Goal" program, said CCI officials in a statement.
"It is a momentous occasion to reach a conservation goal that will benefit the ocean and communities in the Caribbean for generations to come," said Karolin Troubetzkoy, a well-known St. Lucia hotelier and CCI envoy, at a late June ceremony in Antigua to honor the five destinations.
CCI's programs bring together government, the private sector and partners including NGOs in "a collaborative movement to conserve and sustainably manage the Caribbean's marine and coastal environments," according to officials.
The group was founded in 2008 to "incentivize Caribbean governments to meet their marine conservation objectives," support the destinations through "new funding and accelerating meaningful action." CCI also aims to achieve sustainable development and growth to create "more prosperous and stable" regional economies.
"Recognizing these nations' successes in marine and coastal conservation is an important message to the other CCI members that getting to the 20 percent target by 2020 is not an impossible goal, Troubetzkoy added.
CCI recognized another four Caribbean destinations for "taking steps to propose marine areas that will more than double their current levels of protection," including the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands, Grenada and St. Lucia.
The Bahamas will declare an additional eight-plus million acres of marine protection, more than double its area of protection, meeting CCI's 20-by-20 target ahead of next year's' deadline, officials added.
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