Dominican officials announced yesterday that they will take steps to prevent coastal marine pollution caused by ships. The announcement was made at the closing of an international Forum on the subject held in Santo Domingo under the sponsorship of the London-based International Maritime Organization (IMO), the United Nations specialized body charged with shipping and marine environment matters. Among other things, it was promised that the DR would finally ratify the 1973 International Convention on the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) and its Technical Annex V, which deals with garbage discharges from ships. [The DR has a poor ratification record for IMO-sponsored treaties, with only a few technical treaties and the 1969 convention on liability for oil spills ratified.] The DR will receive technical assistance from the IMO to create adequate port facilities to accommodate safe waste discharges and unloading from docking ships, and to create a system of inspections of ships passing through Dominican territorial waters to ensure that they are not dumping while offshore. The Forum held included government delegates and experts from 30 nations, including the Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, the Netherlands (which still has several territories in the Caribbean, such as Curacao), Nicaragua, U.S., Venezuela and the nations of CARICOM. The Forum resolved that all nations should ratify and take the necessary implementation steps for MARPOL Annex V by the year 2003, and they called upon the April meeting in Santo Domingo of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS) to agree on a concrete joint action program on ship pollution in the Caribbean Basin.
