Speeches

I would like to especially thank the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for receiving us today in Caracas and for making this third meeting of the Sargassum Subcommission possible.

I also thank Cuba, as Chair of the Executive Board of the Subcommission, for its leadership, and each and every one of you for once again taking up this space for regional work.

This meeting is taking place at a particularly important moment for our region.

In a few days, the 4th EU-Caribbean Conference on Sargassum–Global Gateway: Shaping a Sargassum Value Chain in the Caribbean will be held.

And, at the same time, this year we have seen, perhaps as never before, how sargassum has been taking over our coasts and beaches, affecting different dimensions of life in the Greater Caribbean.

For those of us who live in this region, this reality is impossible to ignore. We see how coastal communities live daily with large accumulations of sargassum.

We see beaches transformed in a matter of days, putting at risk tourism activities on which thousands of families depend.

We see coastal and marine ecosystems, which sustain much of our natural and economic wealth, seriously affected.

And we see governments respond, season after season, to a phenomenon whose scale, frequency and complexity continue to increase.

That is why the first question we should ask ourselves today is very simple:

What does it really mean to respond to sargassum as a region?

Our countries have accumulated experience. They have developed scientific knowledge, technologies, management models and new forms of use. And they have learned, often in very difficult circumstances, what works, what does not work and where significant gaps still exist.

But sargassum continues to remind us of something essential: the phenomenon that reaches a given beach did not begin there, nor does it end there.

It is, by its very nature, a challenge that obliges us to look beyond our national borders.

And that reality directly touches on a broader question: how we strengthen the joint governance of the Caribbean Sea that we share.

Regional governance is built by creating permanent spaces for coordination, sharing our knowledge, building trust and agreeing on priorities in the face of challenges that no State can resolve on its own.

In this context, the Association of Caribbean States occupies a unique position. It is the only regional organization whose membership brings together all the countries and territories that have coasts on the Caribbean Sea. Therefore, there is no other space better positioned or with greater regional legitimacy to articulate a truly comprehensive response to sargassum.

In that regard, this Subcommission has a value that goes beyond the management of sargassum. It is a concrete piece of the governance of the Caribbean Sea and the mechanism through which the ACS can mobilize the breadth of its membership to coordinate that regional response.

And precisely for that reason, this cannot be merely a space to share what each country is doing. It must help us identify what we can do together; turn experiences into common priorities; and project them into the spaces where decisions are made on cooperation, financing and investment.

And that task takes on special importance now that we are approaching the upcoming Conference in Quintana Roo.

The Global Gateway Conference offers us a concrete opportunity to bring the Greater Caribbean into an international conversation on the future of the response to sargassum.

But our presence there should aspire to more than participation.

We must arrive with a voice of our own: built from what our countries are experiencing, from the solutions they are already developing and from what we need to change.

And that voice must find its natural space for articulation in the ACS. Precisely because it represents the entire Greater Caribbean, the Association is better positioned than any other organization to gather our different realities, turn them into regional positions and give them continuity beyond a conference or a sargassum season.

And that brings us to the second question for our discussion today:

What do we want to achieve after Quintana Roo?

That our priorities be better reflected in cooperation initiatives.

That our knowledge and capacities be better connected.

That the experiences that are producing results can be scaled up.

And that the most affected communities can also benefit from the economic opportunities that are beginning to emerge around sargassum.

We do not need to reiterate diagnoses that we know well. We need to make better use of our capacities to identify where regional cooperation can produce real change.

That is also the logic of our agenda today.

During the morning, we will learn about what we are doing in our region. In the afternoon, the challenge will be to look at these experiences together and ask ourselves what they tell us about the priorities of the Greater Caribbean.

Because a regional perspective is not built by erasing our differences. It is built by identifying what we share and what we can advance together.

And this Subcommission has the conditions to do so.

Its members understand the phenomenon from different disciplines and from very diverse national realities. That knowledge must allow us to participate in the international conversation not only as a region affected by sargassum, but as a region that develops solutions, experiments, innovates and has proposals to contribute.

That change in perspective must also be reflected in our relationship with our partners.

International cooperation should not ask only what the Greater Caribbean needs. It should also recognize what the Greater Caribbean is already building, which solutions can be scaled up and what alliances we need to make this possible.

Excellencies, distinguished representatives:

This meeting offers us the opportunity to take a concrete step in that direction.

At the end of this day, we must leave Caracas with clearer common priorities to take to Quintana Roo, but also with a more precise understanding of the role that this Subcommission and the ACS must play going forward.

The Association is not simply one more participant in the response to sargassum. Because of the composition of its membership and its mandate for cooperation in the Greater Caribbean, it is the organization called upon to articulate it and to ensure that all the coasts, countries and territories of the Caribbean Sea are part of it.

If we manage to connect the experience of our countries, build common priorities and bring them consistently to the spaces where decisions are made, we will have taken an important step in addressing sargassum.

But we will also have strengthened something even more important: our capacity, through the Association of Caribbean States, to jointly govern the Caribbean Sea that we share.

Thank you very much.