Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne says his country will become the first “Future Island Nation” in the Caribbean.
Addressing over 60,000 attendees at the Global Citizen Festival in Central Park Saturday night, Browne said, that through a new partnership with Parley for Oceans, Antigua and Barbuda will be adopting the Parley Air Strategy.
Parley Air is the strategy to end the fast-growing threat of marine plastic pollution.
“Antigua and Barbuda is committing to building a Parley Air Base – a recycling station that actually works – which will intercept approximately 27, 000 tons of plastic on the beaches and from polluting the environment by 2030, thereby helping eliminate plastic pollutants from our shores,” Browne told the festival.
An Antigua and Barbuda Government statement said Parley for the Oceans addresses “major threats towards our oceans, the most important ecosystem of our planet.”
It said Parley has been created “to accelerate a process of change that is already in progress.
“No other big movement in the history of humankind has developed faster than the environmental cause,” the statement said.
“We want to make sure we are fast enough to meet the ultimate deadline and turn the ship around before we lose a treasure we have only just started to explore and still don’t fully understand: the fantastic blue universe beneath us — the oceans,” it added.
The Antigua and Barbuda Government said Parley, an organization of concerned musicians, professionals, artistes, activists and other individuals, believes that plastic is “a design failure, one that can only be solved by reinventing the material itself.”
The government said Parley also believes that in order to create change, “the production of more plastic must cease immediately and use up-cycled marine plastic waste instead.
Parley’s driving motto is that “everyone has a role to play, avoid plastic wherever possible, intercept plastic waste and redesign the material itself.”
Browne told the festival in Central Park that “the world must transition to more innovative methods to reimagine the way plastic is used,” according to the statement.
