CARICOM                                    January 30, 2025

   Designed to facilitate enhanced collaboration among countries, inter-governmental organisations and other ocean stakeholders, the OCM is aimed at promoting well-coordinated efforts to restore and preserve the region’s valuable marine ecosystems.

   By fostering synergies and improving efficiency, it aims to address critical environmental challenges while unlocking the economic, environmental, and social benefits of a healthy ocean.

   On 23 January 2025, the ProCaribePlus Project announced the activation of the OCM. The ProCaribePlus Project is a regional initiative for protecting and restoring the ocean’s natural capital, building resilience and supporting region-wide investments for sustainable, blue, socio-economic development in the Caribbean and North Brazil Shelf Large Marine Ecosystems (CLME+ region).

   Seventeen states and nine Intergovernmental Organisations have now signed the ‘Memorandum of Understanding Enabling the Creation of a Coordination Mechanism to Support Integrated Ocean Governance in the Caribbean and North Brazil Shelf Large Marine Ecosystems’.

   As one of the intergovernmental organisation signatories to the OCM MOU, the CARICOM Secretariat, is pleased to be part of this ambitious governance arrangement to advance sustainable use and conservation of shared marine resources in the wider Caribbean.

   For over two decades, the Region has been collaborating with other countries, intergovernmental organisations and civil society organisations, as part of the Caribbean Sea Large Marine Ecosystem (CLME) approach to ocean management.

   The coordination mechanism is the latest evolution in this process. It creates a governance platform where countries of the wider Caribbean influence coordinated efforts and strategic impacts in sustainable Caribbean Sea management. 

   Within CARICOM, efforts are also underway to strengthen ocean governance and management through the articulation of a regional sustainable ocean management policy to harmonise blue pathways to achieving the objectives of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas.    The development and implementation of this policy will naturally synergise with the strategic actions of the wider Caribbean’s large marine ecosystem approach, strengthening the connections of national, subregional and regional management of our shared natural resources in the marine environment.