By ShipCalculators.com · Published 8 May 2026 · last updated 7 June 2026

Cartagena Convention 1983: Wider Caribbean Marine Environment

The Convention for the Protection and Development of the Marine Environment of the Wider Caribbean Region, universally called the Cartagena Convention, was adopted at Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, on 24 March 1983 and entered into force on 11 October 1986. It is the only legally binding regional environmental agreement for the Wider Caribbean Region (WCR), an ocean envelope of approximately 4.3 million km² that encompasses the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea and the adjacent Atlantic waters from the Bahamas in the north to the mouth of the Marowijne river between Suriname and French Guiana in the south. The Convention is administered by the UNEP Caribbean Environment Programme (CEP) through its Regional Coordinating Unit (CAR/RCU) in Kingston, Jamaica, and is operationalised through the Caribbean Action Plan (CAP), the parallel cooperation document agreed in Montego Bay in April 1981, two years before the parent treaty was signed. The substantive obligations of the regime are layered onto the parent Convention through three thematic Protocols: the Oil Spills Protocol (Cartagena, 24 March 1983, in force 11 October 1986), the SPAW Protocol on Specially Protected Areas and Wildlife (Kingston, 18 January 1990, in force 18 June 2000) and the LBS Protocol on pollution from land-based sources and activities (Aruba, 6 October 1999, in force 13 August 2010). The Cartagena framework has 25 Contracting Parties spanning the Caribbean island states and the continental coastal states of the Gulf and the Caribbean Sea, plus three extra-regional parties (France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) by reason of their territories in the WCR. The Convention sits alongside but does not duplicate the IMO instruments: it complements the MARPOL Convention, the MARPOL Annex I oil pollution prevention regime with its Reg 37 SOPEP shipboard plans, the global OPRC 1990 and OPRC-HNS 2000 instruments, and the US Caribbean ECA under MARPOL Annex VI. Crucially, the Wider Caribbean Region carries a live MARPOL Annex V Special Area designation (in force 1 May 2011), making it a garbage-discharge restricted zone under international law. The Convention is the Caribbean counterpart of the HELCOM Convention 1992 for the Baltic, the OSPAR Convention 1992 for the North-East Atlantic and the Barcelona Convention 1976/1995 for the Mediterranean, with which it cooperates through the UNEP Regional Seas Programme.

Contents

Background: 1983 origin and 1986 entry into force

The Wider Caribbean basin is a semi-enclosed sea threaded between two continents, with surface waters that exit through the Yucatán Channel, around the western tip of Cuba, into the Gulf of Mexico, and then return to the Atlantic through the Florida Straits as the Loop Current that becomes the Gulf Stream. The basin is rimmed by 38 island and continental states and territories, drains the watersheds of the Mississippi, Magdalena, Orinoco and Amazon margin rivers, and carries some of the densest shipping density in the world after the South China Sea. That traffic includes all transits of the Panama Canal, the crude-oil and product flows from Venezuela, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago and the Mexican Gulf coast to the United States and Europe, and the largest concentrated cruise sector on Earth.

By the late 1970s the basin showed every classical symptom of a stressed semi-enclosed sea. Localised oil spills around the Aruba, Curaçao and Trinidad refineries, sewage outfalls from Havana, Santo Domingo, Port-au-Prince, Kingston, Bridgetown and San Juan, agricultural runoff carrying nitrogen and phosphorus into reef lagoons, the destruction of mangrove belts to support coastal tourism and shrimp farming, escalating bleaching and disease events on the Mesoamerican Reef and the Bahamas Bank, and the rapid decline of manatee and sea-turtle populations across the region. The 1979 grounding of the supertanker Atlantic Empress off Tobago and the 1983 spill from the crude-oil terminal at Bahía las Minas, Panama sharpened the political appetite for a regional regime.

UNEP, through its Regional Seas Programme launched in 1974, brought the basin into the programme as the Caribbean Region at the Caracas Inter-governmental Meeting on the Caribbean Action Plan (April 1981), where the Caribbean Action Plan (CAP) was adopted as the operational framework. The Plan committed the participating governments to negotiate a binding framework convention. After two years of negotiations under the Steering Committee chaired alternately by Mexico and Venezuela, the text was finalised at Cartagena de Indias and signed on 24 March 1983. The Convention required ratification by nine states to enter into force; that threshold was reached on 11 September 1986 when Saint Lucia deposited its instrument of ratification, and the Convention entered into force 30 days later on 11 October 1986.

The Convention is, in its parent text, a classical UNEP-style framework instrument. It defines the Convention area, requires Contracting Parties to take all appropriate measures to prevent, reduce and control pollution from the principal vectors (ships, dumping, sea-bed activities, airborne sources, land-based sources), and requires cooperation in pollution emergencies, in environmental impact assessment, in monitoring and in scientific and technical cooperation. The substantive obligations are deliberately delegated to the Protocols, an architecture borrowed directly from the 1976 Barcelona Convention.

Three thematic Protocols

The Cartagena Convention regime is built around its parent framework Convention plus three thematic Protocols, each addressing a discrete pollution vector and each requiring separate ratification. The Protocols, in chronological order of adoption, are:

Protocol	Adopted	Entry into force	Parties (2024)
Oil Spills Protocol	24 March 1983, Cartagena	11 October 1986	Near-universal among Convention Parties
SPAW Protocol	18 January 1990, Kingston	18 June 2000	18
LBS Protocol	6 October 1999, Aruba (Oranjestad)	13 August 2010	15

Each Protocol has its own Contracting Parties list and its own entry-into-force date. The Oil Spills Protocol has near-universal coverage among Convention Parties. The SPAW Protocol counts 18 Parties and the LBS Protocol counts 15 Parties as of 2024. Three thematic Regional Activity Centres support the substantive work programme: RAC-REMPEITC Caribe at Curaçao for marine pollution response, SPAW-RAC at Guadeloupe for the SPAW Protocol, and the CIMAB Centre in Havana, Cuba together with the CEHI in Saint Lucia and the IMA in Trinidad functioning as the joint LBS sub-programme network.

Oil Spills Protocol 1983 (in force 1986)

The Protocol Concerning Co-operation in Combating Oil Spills in the Wider Caribbean Region was opened for signature at Cartagena alongside the parent Convention on 24 March 1983 and entered into force on 11 October 1986. At the time of its adoption the Protocol was the most advanced regional oil-spill response instrument in the world, predating the global OPRC 1990 by seven years. It commits the Contracting Parties to develop and maintain national contingency plans for oil-spill response, to designate a national authority and a national operational contact point for receiving and transmitting reports of oil-spill incidents, to render mutual assistance in the event of an oil-spill emergency that affects or is likely to affect another Party, and to exchange information on response capabilities and on technical and scientific developments.

The Protocol is operationalised through RAC-REMPEITC Caribe in Curaçao, established in 1995 under a tripartite arrangement between the Government of the Netherlands, the IMO and UNEP. The Centre delivers training, exercise programmes (including the recurring CARIBPOLEX sub-regional exercises), advisory missions on contingency-plan development, and a regional operational watch over the Convention area. The Centre also serves as the IMO Regional Marine Pollution Emergency, Information and Training Centre for the Wider Caribbean and operates as the regional point of contact for the OPRC global system.

The Protocol is parallel to but distinct from the global OPRC 1990 and OPRC-HNS 2000 regime. Where OPRC sets the global minimum (national contingency plans, shipboard plans, port and offshore plans, mutual assistance), the Cartagena Oil Spills Protocol provides a regional operational backbone through which OPRC obligations are delivered in the WCR, with the practical advantage that all major Caribbean states are Parties and that the Curaçao Centre is the operational hub. The Protocol doesn’t duplicate the MARPOL Annex I oil pollution prevention regime or the Reg 37 SOPEP shipboard contingency machinery; it complements them by closing the response gap between flag-state shipboard obligations and coastal-state preparedness.

SPAW Protocol 1990 (in force 2000)

The Protocol Concerning Specially Protected Areas and Wildlife in the Wider Caribbean Region, universally called the SPAW Protocol, was opened for signature at Kingston, Jamaica, on 18 January 1990. Ratification took a decade, and the Protocol entered into force on 18 June 2000 when Trinidad and Tobago deposited the ninth instrument of ratification. The SPAW Protocol is the most ambitious species and habitat-protection regional instrument in the Wider Caribbean and one of the strongest in the global Regional Seas family.

The SPAW Protocol creates three categories of obligation. First, the Annex I species (around 70 plant species) and Annex II species (around 100 animal species, including all six WCR sea-turtle species, the Antillean manatee Trichechus manatus manatus, all marine mammals of the WCR, the scarlet macaw, the American crocodile, the Caribbean monk seal before its 2008 declaration of extinction, and a long list of corals, sponges and reef fishes) receive an absolute prohibition on taking, possession, killing or commercial trade. Annex III species (around 50 species, including the queen conch Aliger gigas and several reef-fish stocks) receive obligations of regulated and sustainable use. Second, the Protocol commits Parties to establish a network of Specially Protected Areas (SPAs) under domestic law and to nominate them to the SPAW Listed Areas register, the regional counterpart to the SPAMI list under the Mediterranean SPA/BD Protocol. Third, the Protocol requires cooperation in research, monitoring and management.

The Protocol is operationalised through SPAW-RAC in Guadeloupe, established in 2000 with the support of the Government of France. As of 2024 the SPAW Listed Areas register includes around 40 designated sites, among them the Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System (Belize), the Hol Chan Marine Reserve (Belize), the Banco Chinchorro Biosphere Reserve (Mexico), the Saba Marine Park (Netherlands), the Bonaire National Marine Park (Netherlands), the Soufrière Marine Management Area (Saint Lucia), the Tobago Cays Marine Park (Saint Vincent and the Grenadines), the Buccoo Reef Marine Park (Trinidad and Tobago), the Old Providence McBean Lagoon National Park (Colombia) and the Cayos Cochinos (Honduras). The SPAW listing isn’t a direct IMO designation, but it carries weight in IMO discussions on PSSAs and on Special Areas, and it is a recognised reference document at the MARPOL Convention framework.

LBS Protocol 1999 (in force 2010)

The Protocol Concerning Pollution from Land-Based Sources and Activities, the LBS Protocol, was opened for signature at Oranjestad, Aruba, on 6 October 1999 and entered into force on 13 August 2010, when Trinidad and Tobago deposited the ninth instrument of ratification. Ratification took eleven years, the longest gap between signature and entry into force of any of the three Protocols, reflecting the substantial domestic-law adjustments required of Parties.

The LBS Protocol addresses pollution that reaches the Convention area from land, the dominant pollution vector in the WCR, estimated to account for around 80 percent of marine pollution loading by mass. The Protocol attaches three technical Annexes that operationalise the substantive obligations:

Annex I: source categories and substances of priority concern (sewage, industry, agriculture, hazardous wastes, air emissions, persistent organic pollutants).
Annex II: factors used to determine effluent and emission source controls and management practices (best available techniques, best environmental practices, basin and site-specific factors).
Annex III: domestic-sewage effluent limits with harmonised regional standards for biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5), total suspended solids (TSS), pH, fats, oils and grease, faecal coliforms, total nitrogen, total phosphorus, floatables and other parameters, with two classes (Class I waters such as those used for primary contact recreation and aquaculture, Class II waters more tolerant) and with implementation timelines that vary by Party.

The numerical effluent standards in Annex III are particularly important. Article 5 of the LBS Protocol commits Parties to apply Annex III standards either immediately or under a phased timetable, and they constitute the first harmonised numerical effluent regime in the Wider Caribbean. Implementation is supported through the CReW+ project (Caribbean Regional Fund for Wastewater Management), originally a UNEP-IDB-GEF instrument launched in 2011 and refunded as CReW+ in 2020 with around US$15 million for sewage infrastructure across nine pilot countries.

Wider Caribbean Region geographic scope

The Convention area is defined in Article 2(1) as the marine environment of the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea and the areas of the Atlantic Ocean adjacent thereto, south of 30 degrees north latitude and within 200 nautical miles of the Atlantic coasts of the States referred to in Article 25 of the Convention. The southern boundary follows the territorial-sea outer limit along the Atlantic coasts of the Guianas and the northern coast of South America, ending at the eastern boundary of the territorial sea of Suriname at the mouth of the Marowijne (Maroni) river.

The total area is approximately 4.3 million km², composed of the major sub-basins: the Gulf of Mexico (about 1.55 million km²), the Caribbean Sea proper (about 2.75 million km²) and the adjacent Atlantic strip along the Bahamian Bank, Florida Straits, Hispaniola and the Lesser Antilles outer arc. The Convention area explicitly doesn’t extend north of 30 degrees north latitude, so the Atlantic continental shelf of the United States from Cape Hatteras northwards is outside the Convention area, and it doesn’t extend west of the Yucatán Peninsula into the Pacific. The internal waters of Contracting Parties are included only insofar as the Parties have so notified the Secretariat.

The geographic scope is wider than most IMO MARPOL Special Area definitions, which use sometimes different boundaries tailored to specific Annexes. The WCR’s MARPOL Annex V Special Area (in force since 1 May 2011) broadly follows the Cartagena Convention area, making the region the only one in the Western Hemisphere carrying live IMO garbage-discharge special-area restrictions alongside the regional treaty framework.

25 Contracting Parties (island states + continental coastal states)

As of mid-2024 the Cartagena Convention has 25 Contracting Parties: Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, France (in respect of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin and Saint Barthélemy and the French Guiana coast), Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, the Netherlands (in respect of Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius and Sint Maarten), Nicaragua, Panama, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom (in respect of Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the British Virgin Islands), the United States of America and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Suriname signed the Convention in 1983 but has not ratified, and is therefore a signatory but not a Contracting Party. El Salvador is a Caribbean basin state by watershed but has no Caribbean coastline and has not joined.

The Parties divide naturally into three groups:

Independent Caribbean island states: Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago.
Continental coastal states: Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, the United States, Venezuela.
Extra-regional Parties with WCR territories: France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom.

The presence of the three extra-regional Parties matters because their territories include some of the most ecologically significant sites in the WCR: Saba, Bonaire, the Pitons, Saint Martin, the British Virgin Islands, Cayman, the French Guiana coast. Without France, the Netherlands and the UK the regime would have 22 Parties but would lack jurisdiction over large portions of the Eastern Caribbean.

UNEP-CEP Secretariat in Kingston, Jamaica

The Convention is administered by the UNEP Caribbean Environment Programme (CEP) through its Regional Coordinating Unit (CAR/RCU) at Kingston, Jamaica, hosted by the Government of Jamaica under a 1986 Headquarters Agreement signed in parallel with the entry into force of the Convention. The CAR/RCU is housed at 14-20 Port Royal Street, Kingston and operates as a UNEP Out-Posted Office reporting through UNEP Nairobi.

The Secretariat services the biennial Conference of the Parties (COP) of the Convention, the Inter-governmental Meeting (IGM) of the Caribbean Action Plan, the Meetings of the Parties to each of the three Protocols, the COP Bureau, and an extensive Sub-programme machinery covering the Assessment and Management of Environmental Pollution (AMEP), Specially Protected Areas and Wildlife (SPAW), Communications, Education, Training and Awareness (CETA) and Marine Pollution from Land-Based Sources sub-programmes. The Director of the CAR/RCU also serves as the Coordinator of the UNEP Caribbean Environment Programme.

The Secretariat employs around 20 to 25 staff drawn from across the region and works through a network of National Focal Points in each Contracting Party. The substantive Sub-programmes are supported through the three Regional Activity Centres (Curaçao, Guadeloupe, Havana / Saint Lucia / Trinidad LBS network) and through partnerships with the IMO Regional Office, the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre in Belize, the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat in Guyana and the Inter-American Development Bank.

MARPOL Annex V Special Area: Wider Caribbean Region (in force 2011)

The Wider Caribbean Region carries a live MARPOL Annex V Special Area designation. The area was formally designated in 1991 under the IMO MARPOL Annex V Special Area framework, and the Special Area garbage-discharge restrictions entered into force on 1 May 2011, following certification by the riparian states that adequate port reception facilities had been established across the region.

The Annex V Special Area means that inside the WCR the garbage discharge rules are tighter than global defaults. Inside a Special Area, only comminuted food waste (particle size not exceeding 25 mm) may be discharged at sea, and only at not less than 12 nautical miles from the nearest land, with the ship en route and proceeding at not less than 4 knots. All other categories of garbage, including domestic wastes, operational wastes, cooking oil, plastics (already prohibited globally), cargo residues and non-comminuted food waste, are prohibited from sea discharge. The consequence for the cruise sector is that ships operating in the Caribbean can’t use the 3-nautical-mile comminuted food waste exception available outside Special Areas; the tighter 12-nautical-mile threshold applies throughout.

The Annex V Special Area is the one IMO MARPOL special designation that is already in operational effect for the WCR. The region is not a MARPOL Annex I (oil) Special Area, not a MARPOL Annex II (NLS) Special Area, and the US Caribbean ECA covers only the waters within 200 nautical miles of Puerto Rico and the USVI for Annex VI air-pollution purposes, not the entire WCR. There is a separate active proposal to designate the WCR as an Annex IV (sewage) Special Area, which has not yet entered into force and is described below.

Proposed MARPOL Annex IV Sewage Special Area for the WCR

A long-running diplomatic initiative within the Cartagena framework is the proposal to designate the Wider Caribbean Region as a Special Area under MARPOL Annex IV (sewage). The proposal was formally put to the IMO at MEPC 65 in May 2013 and has been on the MEPC agenda in subsequent sessions. An Annex IV Special Area designation would prohibit any discharge of untreated or partially treated sewage from passenger ships within the area and would require all such ships to discharge sewage to port reception facilities or to use approved on-board treatment systems meeting the Special Area standard.

The proposal is technically attractive because the WCR is dominated by passenger-cruise traffic and because the basin has limited dilution capacity. It hasn’t yet entered into force because of a fundamental precondition under MARPOL: adequate port reception facilities across the Convention area must be certified to the IMO before the Special Area discharge restrictions can take operational effect. The CEP Secretariat coordinates with the IMO Marine Environment Division through the CEPAMC working group, which produces biennial reception-facility readiness reports. As of 2024 the readiness gap remains material: several Eastern Caribbean ports lack the capacity to handle Annex IV sewage volumes from large cruise vessels. The COP biennial work programme for 2024-2026 prioritises closure of this gap as a strategic objective, with funding support from the Caribbean Trust Fund and from the EU Caribbean Investment Facility. Until the IMO MEPC issues the entry-into-force decision, the global Annex IV regime applies unchanged in the WCR.

This Annex IV proposal is distinct from the already in-force Annex V Special Area described above; a common source of confusion among practitioners is to treat the two as a single “proposed Annex IV/V Special Area,” when in fact the Annex V Special Area has been operational since 1 May 2011.

Relationship to PSSA Sabana-Camagüey 1997

The Sabana-Camagüey Archipelago off the north-central coast of Cuba was designated a Particularly Sensitive Sea Area (PSSA) by the IMO at MEPC 41 in November 1997, becoming the first PSSA designated in the Wider Caribbean Region and one of the earliest PSSAs anywhere after the 1990 Great Barrier Reef PSSA. The archipelago is a chain of around 2,500 small cays stretching for some 465 km along the northern coast of the Cuban provinces of Matanzas, Villa Clara, Sancti Spíritus, Ciego de Ávila and Camagüey, separating the Old Bahama Channel from the inshore lagoonal waters. The cays support the largest expanse of healthy seagrass beds and mangroves in the WCR and an internationally significant flamingo population.

The PSSA designation is supported by Associated Protective Measures (APMs) that route shipping along the Old Bahama Channel and prohibit the use of inshore routes by ships above defined size thresholds. The PSSA is recognised in Cuban Maritime Authority Notices to Mariners and on the relevant Admiralty and Cuban GEOCUBA charts, and Cuba has nominated several sub-areas of the archipelago to the SPAW Listed Areas register. The PSSA is a case in which the regional Cartagena framework and the global IMO MARPOL framework reinforce each other, with the Cartagena SPAW listing on the conservation side and the IMO PSSA on the navigational-protection side.

Relationship to PSSA Saba Bank 2010

The Saba Bank, a submerged carbonate atoll about 5 km south-west of Saba in the Dutch Caribbean, was designated a PSSA by the IMO at MEPC 60 in March 2010. The Bank is approximately 60 km long and 40 km wide, with depths from 15 m on the eastern bank-top to over 300 m off the western flank, and it supports the most extensive coral reef ecosystem in the Dutch Kingdom and one of the richest reef-fish faunas in the eastern Caribbean. The PSSA is approximately 2,200 km² in area.

The Associated Protective Measures include a mandatory area to be avoided for ships of 300 GT and above carrying oil, oily mixtures, noxious liquid substances, hazardous solid bulk cargoes or containerised hazardous goods in packaged form, and a prohibition on anchoring on the bank-top. Saba Bank is also nominated to the SPAW Listed Areas register and is regulated under the Dutch BES Islands legislation. Like Sabana-Camagüey, Saba Bank illustrates the layered architecture in which the IMO PSSA delivers the navigational restriction and the Cartagena SPAW Protocol delivers the species and habitat protection.

Relationship to US Caribbean ECA (MARPOL Annex VI)

The US Caribbean ECA is a MARPOL Annex VI Emission Control Area designated by the IMO at MEPC 62 in July 2011 and effective from 1 January 2014, covering the waters within 200 nautical miles of Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands. The US Caribbean ECA enforces the 0.10 percent m/m sulphur cap on bunker fuel for ships operating in the area and the NOx Tier III limits for ships with keels laid on or after 1 January 2014, identical to the North American ECA and the North Sea/Baltic SECA-NECAs.

The US Caribbean ECA and the Cartagena Convention regime address fundamentally different pollution vectors and have different geographic scopes. The Cartagena Convention is a regional environmental framework covering the entire WCR (~4.3 million km²), addressing oil-spill response, biodiversity and land-based pollution. The US Caribbean ECA is a narrow MARPOL Annex VI air-pollution instrument covering only the territorial waters and EEZ of two US territories, addressing sulphur and NOx emissions from ships. The two regimes don’t duplicate each other: the Cartagena Convention has no MARPOL Annex VI sulphur or NOx component, and the US Caribbean ECA has no biodiversity or land-based pollution component.

The Cartagena Secretariat has on several occasions proposed the negotiation of a regional WCR ECA that would extend the Annex VI obligations across the Convention area, but no such regional ECA has been agreed. The political feasibility is constrained by the heterogeneity of the WCR Parties: the United States has mature emissions controls, while several small island developing states face real concerns about compliant-fuel availability.

Relationship to OPRC 1990

The International Convention on Oil Pollution Preparedness, Response and Co-operation 1990 (OPRC), adopted at IMO London on 30 November 1990 and in force from 13 May 1995, is the global instrument for oil-spill preparedness and response. The Cartagena Oil Spills Protocol of 1983, in force from 1986, predates OPRC by seven years and was one of the regional models that informed the OPRC negotiation. The two instruments coexist: the Oil Spills Protocol provides the regional operational backbone through RAC-REMPEITC Caribe in Curaçao, while OPRC 1990 and OPRC-HNS 2000 deliver the global minimum (national contingency plans, shipboard plans, port and offshore plans, mutual assistance, training, exercises, polluter-pays compensation arrangements).

In practice, RAC-REMPEITC Caribe acts as the regional point of contact for OPRC reporting in the WCR, the regional training and exercise hub for both regimes, and the technical advisory body for national contingency-plan development. The CARIBPOLEX exercise series and the regional Tier 2 cooperation arrangements with the Oil Spill Response Limited (OSRL) Tier 3 base in Fort Lauderdale integrate the Cartagena and OPRC regimes into a single operational architecture.

Caribbean Action Plan (CAP): UNEP-CEP

The Caribbean Action Plan (CAP) was adopted at the Caracas Inter-governmental Meeting on 5-13 April 1981, two years before the parent Convention, and remains the operational framework under which the Convention is delivered. The CAP is an action-plan document, not a treaty, and is updated through the biennial Inter-governmental Meeting on the Action Plan held jointly with the Convention COP.

The CAP is structured around four Sub-programmes:

AMEP (Assessment and Management of Environmental Pollution): the LBS Protocol, the Oil Spills Protocol, marine litter, ballast water, atmospheric deposition.
SPAW (Specially Protected Areas and Wildlife): the SPAW Protocol, the Listed Areas register, the species programme, the marine mammal regional plan.
CETA (Communications, Education, Training and Awareness): regional outreach, the Tide Lines newsletter, the Caribbean Marine Atlas.
Marine Pollution from Land-Based Sources: a sub-programme within AMEP that delivers the LBS Protocol Annex III implementation through the CReW+ project.

The biennial work programme is adopted at the COP and is funded through the Caribbean Trust Fund supplemented by GEF, EU, IDB, US Department of State and bilateral contributions. The 2024-2026 work programme prioritises MARPOL Annex IV Special Area readiness, marine plastic pollution, climate adaptation and the implementation of the LBS Protocol Annex III standards.

Trust Fund and budget

The Caribbean Trust Fund is the dedicated extra-budgetary financing instrument for the Convention, established by COP decision and held by UNEP under the UNEP Trust Fund umbrella. The Trust Fund is funded by mandatory annual contributions from the Contracting Parties assessed on the UN scale of assessments and by voluntary contributions from Parties, the EU, the IDB, the GEF and bilateral donors. As of the 2024-2026 biennium the Trust Fund operates with an annual budget of around US $3 to 4 million** in mandatory contributions plus around **US$ 10 to 15 million in project funding.

The Trust Fund supports the Secretariat staff, the Sub-programme work, the meetings of the Convention bodies, the Regional Activity Centre support contributions, the COP support and the publications. It is supplemented by direct project funding to the RACs and to specific projects such as CReW+ (LBS), CMA2 (Caribbean Marine Atlas 2), CLME+ (Caribbean Large Marine Ecosystem) and the Marine Plastics regional programme.

Caribbean cruise sector and environmental pressure

The Caribbean basin is the largest concentrated cruise market in the world. Approximately 35 percent of global cruise capacity is deployed in the Caribbean and the Bahamas in any given year, with the regional passenger load at around 25 million visitors per year in the 2024-2025 period (IMO CEP regional reports and UNEP SOCAR 2019 baseline). The leading destinations by passenger throughput are Cozumel (Mexico), Nassau (Bahamas), Miami transit, San Juan (Puerto Rico), Philipsburg (Sint Maarten), Falmouth and Ocho Rios (Jamaica), Roatán (Honduras), Bridgetown (Barbados) and Castries (Saint Lucia). The dominant operators are the three publicly listed groups (Royal Caribbean, Carnival, Norwegian) and a growing number of smaller premium and expedition operators.

The cruise sector creates the most acute environmental pressure on the Cartagena framework. Cruise ships are large generators of grey water, black water (sewage), bilge oily water, hazardous wastes, food waste and packaging garbage, and the compressed itineraries (one or two ports per day) leave little time for proper port-reception offload. The in-force MARPOL Annex V Special Area is one operational check on garbage discharge; the proposed Annex IV Special Area (not yet in force) would add the sewage dimension. The SPAW Protocol provisions on visitor management at Listed Areas and the LBS Protocol Annex III standards applied to port-reception infrastructure complete the framework.

Cargo flows through Panama Canal

The Panama Canal is the principal artery through which world east-west cargo passes the Wider Caribbean Region, and the Caribbean entrance at Colón / Limón Bay sits squarely within the Convention area. The Canal handles approximately 14,000 transits per year of which roughly 80 percent are commercial vessels, with the Panamax / Neopanamax mix of around 60:40 since the 2016 expansion opened the third lane.

The principal commodity flows through the Canal that traverse the Convention area are the US Gulf-coast crude and product flows to Asia (around 1 million bpd), the soybean and grain flows from the US Gulf to China, the container flows from Asia to the US East Coast (around 35 percent of US East Coast container imports transit Panama), and the LNG flows from US Gulf-coast terminals to Asia and to Europe. The volume of marine bunker handled at Cristóbal-Colón is the largest in the WCR, with around 3 million tonnes per year of bunker fuel oil and marine gas oil delivered to Canal transit traffic.

The Cartagena framework engages with the Canal flows principally through the Oil Spills Protocol response architecture (the Panama Canal Authority maintains its own Tier 1 and Tier 2 response arrangements coordinated with RAC-REMPEITC Caribe), through the LBS Protocol obligations on the Panamanian coast (Panama is a Contracting Party to all three Protocols), and through the Annex IV Special Area proposal which, when in force, will apply to all Canal-transit traffic within the Convention area.

Oil refineries: Aruba, Curaçao, Trinidad and Tobago

The Wider Caribbean is home to a concentration of petroleum refining and storage capacity that punches well above its population. The principal refining nodes are:

Aruba: the San Nicolas refinery (originally Lago/Exxon, mothballed in 2012, reactivated and again paused during 2020-2024) with a nameplate capacity of around 235,000 bpd.
Curaçao: the Isla refinery at Emmastad (operated until 2019 by PDVSA under the Curaçao Refinery Lease, currently in transition under various interim operators) with a nameplate capacity of around 335,000 bpd.
Trinidad and Tobago: the Petrotrin Pointe-à-Pierre refinery (closed in 2018, with restart and lease arrangements under the Heritage Petroleum subsidiary), historic capacity around 165,000 bpd.
Saint Croix, US Virgin Islands: the Limetree Bay refinery (formerly HOVENSA, restart attempted in 2021 then suspended), historic capacity around 525,000 bpd.
Cuba: the Cienfuegos refinery at around 65,000 bpd.

The refineries handle large volumes of Venezuelan heavy crude, Trinidad and Mexican condensate and US Gulf-coast medium grades, and they are the source of the largest historical oil-pollution events in the WCR, including the Bahía las Minas spill 1986 off Panama and the smaller chronic discharges from the Aruba and Curaçao terminals. The Cartagena Oil Spills Protocol response architecture is sized around this refining geography, with the Curaçao Centre placed at the heart of the refining cluster and the contingency-plan obligations applied to all Parties hosting refining or storage installations.

Post-Hurricane María 2017 reconstruction

Hurricane María struck Dominica on 18 September 2017 as a Category 5 storm and Puerto Rico on 20 September 2017 as a high-end Category 4 storm, the most destructive single hurricane event in the modern Caribbean record. The storm caused around 3,000 confirmed deaths, near-total destruction of the Dominica forest cover, almost six months of grid blackout in Puerto Rico, and substantial coastal damage in the Eastern Caribbean from Guadeloupe to the British Virgin Islands.

For the Cartagena framework the reconstruction lessons were threefold. First, the port reception facility capacity in the Eastern Caribbean was shown to be highly fragile under disaster conditions, with several smaller islands losing reception capability for months, which directly complicates the Annex IV Special Area readiness timeline. Second, emergency oil-spill response capability was tested under damaged infrastructure, with the lesson that regional Tier 2 capability through RAC-REMPEITC Caribe and the US Coast Guard CG-5RR sector cooperation was critical. Third, the SPAW Listed Areas sustained substantial damage, with several reefs in Saba, Sint Eustatius, Anguilla and the Pitons reduced to rubble in places, requiring decadal recovery programmes.

The COP responded with a strengthened Disaster Risk Reduction sub-component in the SPAW work programme from 2018 onwards, the integration of climate-adaptation programming into the LBS sewage standards (the Annex III Class I and Class II regime now includes provisions on climate-resilient sewage outfalls), and explicit linkage to the Climate Change Centre in Belize for technical support.

2024 marine plastic pollution programme

Marine plastic pollution is the fastest-growing single concern in the WCR, with approximately 300,000 to 400,000 tonnes of plastic estimated to enter the Convention area each year from land-based sources, river discharges and ship-source garbage. The COP at its 2023 meeting in Cartagena adopted a Caribbean Marine Plastic Pollution Strategy 2024-2030, integrated under the LBS Protocol Annex I and the AMEP Sub-programme.

The strategy is built around five action lines: (i) reduction of single-use plastics through national legislation and regional coordination, with reference legislation in Antigua and Barbuda 2016, the Bahamas 2020, Jamaica 2019 and Belize 2020; (ii) extended producer responsibility schemes; (iii) port-reception facility upgrades for Annex V garbage handling, dovetailed with the in-force Annex V Special Area and the proposed Annex IV Special Area; (iv) river-mouth interception programmes for the major WCR river basins (Magdalena, Cauca, Cibao, Chagres, Motagua, Wallaceburg-Ulúa); and (v) regional monitoring through the Caribbean Marine Atlas 2 (CMA2) and the CLME+ programme. The strategy is supported by a GEF-7 contribution of around US$12 million and by parallel funding from the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) and from the EU Caribbean Investment Facility.

Per-state implementation: Jamaica NEPA, Cuba CITMA, Mexico SEMARNAT

National implementation of the Cartagena Convention is delivered through the domestic environmental authority of each Contracting Party, designated as the National Focal Point to the Secretariat. The principal implementation pathways are:

Jamaica: the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA) under the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, operating under the Natural Resources Conservation Authority Act 1991 and the Beach Control Act 1956 (revised). NEPA is also the host-country Focal Point for the Secretariat by virtue of the Headquarters Agreement.
Cuba: the Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología y Medio Ambiente (CITMA) through its Dirección de Medio Ambiente and its operational arm the Centro de Inspección y Control Ambiental (CICA), with the CIMAB marine science institute as the technical implementation body for SPAW and LBS. The Sabana-Camagüey PSSA is implemented through CITMA in cooperation with the Cuban Hydrographic and Geodesic Service (GEOCUBA) and the Maritime Authority of the Ministry of Transport.
Mexico: the Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (SEMARNAT) through the Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas (CONANP) for the SPAW Protocol and the Comisión Nacional del Agua (CONAGUA) for the LBS Protocol. The Banco Chinchorro Biosphere Reserve, the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve and the Mexican Caribbean Reef SPAW listings are managed by CONANP.
Colombia: the Ministerio de Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible through the Dirección General Marítima (DIMAR) for the maritime aspects and the Parques Nacionales Naturales for the SPAW Listed Areas (Old Providence McBean Lagoon and the Seaflower Biosphere Reserve).
United States: the Environmental Protection Agency for the LBS Protocol, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for the SPAW Protocol (Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary), the US Coast Guard for the Oil Spills Protocol, and the Department of State for diplomatic representation.

The full Article 25 list of Parties produces a federated implementation architecture in which the Secretariat coordinates and the national authorities deliver. The biennial COP serves as the accountability mechanism through national reports and the State of the Convention Area Report (SOCAR).

Comparison with HELCOM, OSPAR and Barcelona

The Cartagena Convention is the Caribbean counterpart of the three Atlantic-basin regional sea regimes, and the comparison clarifies the architectural differences:

The HELCOM Convention 1992 covers the Baltic Sea through a Commission with a single integrated text and around 30 Annexes and Recommendations, with strong EU integration and a Baltic Sea Action Plan.
The OSPAR Convention 1992 covers the North-East Atlantic through a Commission with five thematic Annexes and a North-East Atlantic Environment Strategy 2030.
The Barcelona Convention 1976/1995 covers the Mediterranean through a parent Convention plus seven thematic Protocols and the Mediterranean Action Plan.
The Cartagena Convention 1983 covers the Wider Caribbean through a parent Convention plus three thematic Protocols and the Caribbean Action Plan.

The Cartagena regime is institutionally the lightest of the four, with a smaller Secretariat, a smaller Trust Fund, fewer Protocols and no permanent Commission body separate from the COP. It has the most heterogeneous Parties (small island developing states, large continental states, three extra-regional Parties), the most acute funding constraints, and the slowest entry-into-force record for its Protocols: 10 years for SPAW, 11 years for LBS. It compensates with the strongest cooperation with the IMO PSSA framework (Sabana-Camagüey 1997, Saba Bank 2010), a live MARPOL Annex V Special Area (since 1 May 2011), a uniquely deep cruise-sector engagement (CLIA partnership and the Annex IV Special Area initiative), and a strong network of Regional Activity Centres distributed across the Parties rather than concentrated at the seat of the Secretariat.

The Cartagena Convention also coexists with the UNCLOS framework: Part XII of UNCLOS (Articles 192 to 237) provides the umbrella obligations on the protection and preservation of the marine environment, and Article 197 specifically obliges States to cooperate on a regional basis through competent international organisations, which the Cartagena Convention regime is for the WCR.

Ballast water, anti-fouling and emerging ship-source vectors

The Cartagena Convention’s original three-Protocol architecture was built around the pollution vectors that were dominant in the 1980s: oil spills, loss of habitats and wildlife, and sewage plus industrial land-based discharges. Two additional ship-source vectors have risen to prominence since then and sit in the gap between the Convention framework and the IMO instruments.

Ballast water and invasive species. The introduction of invasive species through ballast water exchange is one of the most damaging ecological processes in the WCR. The green mussel Perna viridis, the Pacific red lionfish Pterois volitans (introduced via the aquarium trade but spread via ballast water pathways), and several phytoplankton species including harmful algal bloom taxa have been documented as WCR invasives. The IMO Ballast Water Management Convention 2004, in force from 8 September 2017, is the principal international instrument, and the Cartagena Secretariat cooperates with the IMO Marine Environment Division on its implementation through the AMEP Sub-programme. The WCR has no dedicated ballast water regional instrument comparable to the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between the US and Canada, and the AMEP work programme addresses ballast water through national contingency-plan support and regional reporting rather than through a separate Protocol.

Atmospheric deposition. The WCR receives substantial atmospheric deposition of particulate matter and chemical contaminants from Saharan dust transport, from industrial air pollution generated on the US Gulf coast and in the Mississippi-Ohio valley, and from biomass burning in the Amazon and Central American forests. The Convention addresses atmospheric sources under Article 5 (pollution from aircraft), but the AMEP Sub-programme’s work on atmospheric deposition remains a monitoring and assessment activity rather than a binding obligation. The LBS Protocol Annex I includes atmospheric deposition as a source category, which is the closest the three-Protocol framework gets to addressing this vector.

Anti-fouling systems. The IMO AFS Convention 2001 (the Anti-Fouling Systems Convention, in force 17 September 2008) prohibits the application of organotin-based anti-fouling paints on ships and requires the removal or sealing of existing coatings. Several WCR Contracting Parties have ratified the AFS Convention, but the Cartagena framework has no parallel anti-fouling Protocol and addresses the issue through national implementation of AFS Convention obligations.

Limitations

The Cartagena Convention regime operates with real constraints that practitioners should account for.

Funding gap. The Trust Fund’s mandatory contribution base is around US$3 to 4 million per biennium, insufficient by itself to fund the Sub-programme work, the Regional Activity Centres and the COP machinery. Dependence on voluntary and project funding (GEF, EU, IDB, bilateral) means the work programme is cyclical and subject to donor priorities rather than fixed commitments.

Reception facility readiness. The MARPOL Annex IV Special Area proposal has been on the MEPC agenda since 2013 but can’t enter into force until adequate reception facilities are certified region-wide. The post-María reconstruction set back readiness timelines in the Eastern Caribbean. This isn’t a failure of the legal framework; it’s a capital infrastructure gap.

Protocol ratification asymmetry. Not all 25 Convention Parties have ratified all three Protocols. The SPAW Protocol has 18 Parties and the LBS Protocol has 15 Parties, meaning around 7 to 10 Convention states aren’t bound by the habitat-protection and land-based-pollution obligations. The Annex III LBS sewage standards don’t bind non-Parties regardless of their Convention membership.

Institutional weight. The Cartagena regime has no standing technical committee equivalent to the IMO MEPC, no Commission with an autonomous legal mandate, and no binding dispute-resolution mechanism. Decisions are by consensus at the COP, and implementation is through national authorities whose resources vary considerably across the 25 Parties.

Non-state actors. The Convention binds states, not private operators. The major cruise lines and tanker operators operating in the WCR are subject to the Cartagena obligations only insofar as those obligations are implemented into the domestic law of the Contracting Party where the ship is registered, operates or calls. The Annex V Special Area discharges translate directly into MARPOL flag-state enforcement obligations, but the LBS Protocol and SPAW obligations depend entirely on national transposition.

Warships and government vessels. The Convention doesn’t apply to warships and government vessels in non-commercial service, although Article 12 of the parent Convention commits Parties to ensuring that such vessels act consistently with the Convention so far as is reasonable and practicable.

Frequently asked questions

When was the Cartagena Convention adopted and when did it enter into force?

The Convention for the Protection and Development of the Marine Environment of the Wider Caribbean Region was adopted at Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, on 24 March 1983. It entered into force on 11 October 1986, 30 days after Saint Lucia deposited the ninth instrument of ratification on 11 September 1986.

What are the three Protocols to the Cartagena Convention?

The three Protocols are: the Oil Spills Protocol, adopted at Cartagena on 24 March 1983 and in force from 11 October 1986; the SPAW Protocol on Specially Protected Areas and Wildlife, adopted at Kingston on 18 January 1990 and in force from 18 June 2000; and the LBS Protocol on Pollution from Land-Based Sources and Activities, adopted at Aruba on 6 October 1999 and in force from 13 August 2010.

Is the Wider Caribbean Region a MARPOL Annex V Special Area?

Yes. The Wider Caribbean Region was designated a Special Area under MARPOL Annex V (garbage) in 1991 and the Special Area discharge restrictions entered into force on 1 May 2011, following certification of adequate port reception facilities. A separate proposal to designate the WCR as a Special Area under MARPOL Annex IV (sewage) has not yet entered into force.

Where is the Cartagena Convention Secretariat located?

The Secretariat is the UNEP Caribbean Environment Programme Regional Coordinating Unit (CAR/RCU) at 14-20 Port Royal Street, Kingston, Jamaica. It has been hosted by the Government of Jamaica under a 1986 Headquarters Agreement signed at the time the Convention entered into force.

How many Contracting Parties does the Cartagena Convention have?

The Convention has 25 Contracting Parties as of mid-2024: 13 independent Caribbean island states, 11 continental coastal states, and three extra-regional parties (France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom) by reason of their territories in the Wider Caribbean Region. Suriname signed in 1983 but has not ratified.

What is the RAC-REMPEITC Caribe?

The Regional Marine Pollution Emergency, Information and Training Centre for the Wider Caribbean (RAC-REMPEITC Caribe) is based in Curaçao and was established in 1995 under a tripartite arrangement between the Government of the Netherlands, the IMO, and UNEP. It is the operational hub for the Oil Spills Protocol and functions as the IMO regional centre for oil-spill response training, exercises, and coordination across the Wider Caribbean Region.