Combating Marine Pollution

Maremed Seminar on Pollution Control

Larnaca District Development Agency organized a seminar on pollution control and compensation for environmental damage in the context of the implementation of the program MAREMED on Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2012, at 9:00 am at the Palm Beach Hotel in Larnaca.

The seminar aimed to investigate the following:

• What synergies between European, national, regional and local levels regarding pollution control in cooperation with the project partners and the European institutions DG-ECHO, DG-MARE, CPMR, CEDRE and REMPEC?
• What are the economic and ecological damages resulting from oil spills and pollution of the sea?
• What is the place of pollution control within the macro-regional strategies and what are the shared perspectives between various sea basins?
• How to control pollution in the context of EU actions on maritime safety, particularly in terms of compensation for environmental damage resulting from marine pollution?
• Practical exercises and workshops on how to deal with oil contamination.

Also, on 10 and 11 October, an anti-pollution practical exercise took place in order to organize a beach cleanup campaign for oil spill. In this exercise safety issues were presented, as well as indications on how to organize groups and the required equipment for coastal cleanup. Finally, practical cleanup training on the Oroklini seashore was carried out on October 11. This training involved spill prevention because of the oil spill accident happened in Larnaca Bay, where oil spill cleanup efforts carried out. Two trainers from the European Agency CEDRE showed participants how to organize beach cleanups.  Participants had the chance to carry the experiment with real equipment.

The seminar involved government agencies and environmental organizations, local governments and organizations related to water pollution policy.