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How a growing industry is helping fix Mexico's seaweed problem #NatureAction
Since 2011, a brown seaweed called sargassum has been accumulating on the beaches of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, leading to a ‘seaweed emergency’ in 2019 due to its impact on tourism, which constitutes nearly 90% of the region's GDP. However, with assistance from UNEP and the Global Funds for Coral Reefs, innovative businesses are transforming this invasive seaweed into sustainable products such as eco-friendly fertilizers, cosmetics, and vegan leather, helping to address the issue.
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Let the fishers catch… the plastic!
In this episode of the UN climate action podcast , award-winning documentary director Erin McGoff introduces Lefteris Arapakis, the self-proclaimed “worst fisherman in Greece”. Lefteris hauls in a bountiful catch every day - of plastic pollution. He is the co-founder of Enaleia, Greece’s first fishing school, with a program to train and incentivise fishermen to collect plastic from the sea.
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In the Tatakoto atoll in French Polynesia, a concentration of ‘super corals’, capable of withstanding intense heatwaves as well as extreme temperature fluctuations, has been identified thanks to expeditions supported by UNESCO, Labex Corail and the University of French Polynesia (UPF).
Saiasi Sarau is a fisheries observer, who spends months at sea recording catch and bycatch and collecting biological data of the fish caught. This information helps countries know the status of fish stocks.
As a kid, Christina Perrine used to go through plastic waste to find discarded bottles that she could reuse to make decorative plastic flowers. Her precocious environmental awareness foretold a story about local action and community resilience in Mauritius.