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That much was clear by 2018, when the belt grew to a record size that was estimated at 22 million tons and much of the Caribbean saw its worst-ever inundation. The season spurred increasing calls for a collaborative international response. The following year, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres visited St. Lucia for a July meeting of the Caribbean Community, and he took a side trip to the small fishing village of Praslin Bay. Surrounded by dignitaries, Guterres walked down a dock lined with small boats bobbing atop thick mats of sargassum, which for years had plagued fishers, sea moss farmers and other residents in the area. “So it’s a terrible scene for the people?” he asked a resident in a video posted on the United Nations website. “Yes,” the man responded. “It’s killing the fishes in the bay. The stench. It’s destroying our electronics because of the fumes.” After his visit, Guterres described his sadness on seeing a “landscape that resembled an algae desert for hundreds of meters.” Then he called for international action.  United Nations Secretary General António Guterres visits Praslin Bay, St. Lucia in July 2019 on the sidelines of his attendance at the Caribbean Community Heads of Government Summit that year. Credit: United Nations “Oceans don’t know borders, nor does climate,” he said. “It is a global collective responsibility to take action now.” But that broad international action has not materialized as planned. Despite a growing patchwork of studies and projects across the region, various attempts by the UN and others to coordinate a Caribbean-wide response have been largely stalled by funding shortages, geopolitical issues, the Covid-19 pandemic and other factors. One of the most extensive efforts came about three months after Guterres’ visit to St. Lucia, when Guadeloupe hosted the First International Conference on Sargassum in October 2019. Partners at the event — where the three-year Sarg’Coop program financed by about $3.2 million in European Union funds was officially launched — included the French government, the Guadeloupe Region, UNESCO and other entities. In attendance were representatives from more than a dozen Caribbean countries and territories, as well as the US, Mexico, Brazil and France. Some progress followed. For instance, the Guadeloupe Region — in partnership with the French government, the French National Research Agency and two Brazilian agencies — launched a call for projects that enabled a dozen international studies to be carried out on the health, environmental and economic impact of the seaweed, as well as possible uses for it. Other regional meetings have been held since then as well. Last June, for instance, an European Union-Caribbean conference on “Turning Sargassum into Opportunity” was held in the Dominican Republic, and the topic was discussed the following month at a summit of the EU and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (EU-CELAC) in Brussels, Belgium. But almost five years after the 2019 Guadeloupe conference, the broader goals have not come to fruition on a regional level as envisioned, experts acknowledge. No Caribbean strategy is in place, and the region-wide warning and monitoring center envisioned at the conference has not been established.  Large sargassum mats sweeping into the shoreline in Manchioneal, Portland, Jamaica – one of the top three worst affected areas in the island. Credit: Mona GeoInformatics Institute Instead, many of the actions that grew out of the Guadeloupe conference have centered mainly on the French Caribbean. Funded in part by about $66 million allocated for 2018 to 2026 by the government of France — which for decades has struggled with algae washing ashore on its European coasts — the French islands have launched some of the most extensive response efforts in the Caribbean in recent years. But even this has not been enough to protect residents. Describing Guterres’ visit to Praslin Bay as “nothing more than a photo op,” Martinique-based professor Dr. Dabor Resiere and seven otherresearchers claimed in a March 2023 article that the “local authorities failed to take advantage of such an important visitor to give international recognition to the sargassum phenomenon in the Caribbean.” Four years later, they added, the situation remained “unchanged.” “Despite the French government’s plans to tackle the sargassum problem, these toxic algae are continuing to inundate the coasts of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana in ever-greater volumes,” the researchers wrote in the Journal of Global Health, adding, “Today, there is no national and international consensus on facing this public health problem. There is no Caribbean network or a broad consensus to advance research at this level.” Even Praslin Bay saw scant relief in the years after it welcomed the UN secretary general. In 2022, St. Lucian sargassum researcher Dr. Bethia Thomas produced videos aboutthe village andtwo other nearbycommunities as part of her doctoral thesis. In each video, several residents listed complaints ranging from breathing problems to fisheries destruction to corroding jewelry. “It affects how I breathe, and I also think it affects the children and the way that they function, because sometimes they’re so moody and they cannot sit and do the activities because it’s so awful,” a teacher says in the video of Praslin Bay. “And I think it’s affecting us mentally.” Concerns about sargassum’s effects on the mental health of coastal residents and workers were noted in a September 2023 report by the 34-member Western Central Atlantic Fishery Commission. “The unpleasant odor, the deterioration of their environment, lack of access to the beaches for relaxation, uncertainty about the future, increase in physical ailments such as respiratory illness and skin rashes, and concerns about other potential health risks, among other things, will naturally affect mental health,” stated the commission, a regional fisheries body established under the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. However, the report added that such mental health impacts are not currently being studied. In the absence of a regional strategy, national sargassum management plans have been developed in most countries and territories in the Caribbean, including eight through grant-funded projects affiliated with the University of the West Indies in St. Lucia, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, BVI, Anguilla and Montserrat. But few have been officially adopted at the government level, and even fewer are adequately funded or closely followed. Sargassum lines the shore in July 2023 in Anegada in the British Virgin Islands. Credit: Freeman Rogers/The BVI Beacon “Sometimes the small communities get left behind,” Thomas said. “Maybe not intentionally, but in small island developing states with limited resources, you have to prioritize. And perhaps other things — like building a new hospital and constructing new roads, new schools — might take precedence over developing a sargassum management plan.” Partly as a result, sargassum responses can vary dramatically from island to island. But in probing major influxes in six Caribbean countries and territories last year, CPI found one constant: people are suffering.
Negligible investment from polluting countries
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