Conservation and Protection of Marine and Coastal Waters in Colombia: REDCAM as a Strategy for Sustainable Development

The Colombian marine and coastal areas are exposed to multiple stressors as a result of anthropic activities such as agriculture, mining, port activities and tourism, among others. added to this is the lack of wastewater treatment and basic sanitation systems in the coastal human settlements, which contributes to the inadequate disposal of liquid and solid waste, exacerbating marine pollution.

The coastal ecosystems in Colombia have environmental importance and offer multiple ecosystem services. For this reason, the country is developing actions to protect, conserve and use them in a sustainable way, which have been based on updated scientific information. In this sense, the National Monitoring Program, known as the Surveillance Network for the Protection and Conservation of Marine and Coastal Waters of Colombia (REDCAM, by its Spanish acronym), has been providing data and information since 2001 that contributes to decision-making.

This monitoring program is an inter-institutional network that collects, systematizes and analyzes information on the quality of marine and coastal water and sediments; it has been in operation for 24 years and has more than 350 stations distributed on the Caribbean and Pacific coasts. REDCAM currently has a time series of more than six hundred thousand environmental records, which are open for consultation by the public.

The information produce in the framework of REDCAM is used to produce the annual diagnostic report on the Colombia marine and coastal waters quality. The report includes the analysis of multiple variables indicating the conditions of the marine environment, and the Marine and Coastal Water Quality Index – ICAM, which is an official statistical operation in Colombia that contributes to the government's goals in public policy instruments.

On the other hand, the REDCAM data allow the country to report the indicators of Sustainable Development Goal 14 (Life Below Water) that aim to conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources, reducing marine pollution of all kinds, including marine debris and nutrient pollution, and minimizing the effects of ocean acidification. From Colombia, INVEMAR has been making progress in the creation of technical capacities to provide the information required for the reporting of indicators 14.1.1.a (coastal eutrophication index), 14.1.1.b (density of floating plastic debris), and 14.3.1 (mean acidity of the sea), which are measured in a set of representative sampling stations for the country.