5th CleanAtlantic Coordination Meeting

18 December 2019

The Secretariat attended the 5th Coordination meeting – including invitation to advisory board members (which includes OSPAR Secretariat). The meeting was held in Galway (Ireland) from 2-3 December 2019.

The project aims to protect biodiversity and ecosystem services in the Atlantic Area by improving capabilities to monitor, prevent and remove (macro) marine litter. The project will also contribute to raise awareness and change attitudes among stakeholders and to improve marine litter managing systems.

The main purpose of the meeting was to report on progress against the various work packages. There are 8 work packages which link with the OSPAR ML RAP, MSFD EU TG-ML and the Atlantic Maritime Strategy. The project members presented fantastic progress on the expected deliverables.

Headway has been made on;

  • the interactive online map on marine litter data, gaps and initiatives;
  • the CleanAtlantic Knowledge Tool which will be an online database compiling information on marine litter resources as well as projects and organisations;
  • the economic impacts of marine litter studies;
  • database interfaces that will allow interoperability between existing marine litter databases;
  • the development of modelling tools;
  • improving monitoring methods;
  • best practices for waste management in ports, and for beach litter cleanups by local authorities;
  • raising awareness activities for each participating country.

More information on the project can be found here