Brasília, April 26, 2004 (Agência Brasil) - Beginning today in Brasília, representatives of the governments of Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and Colombia, and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) will discuss the adoption of a Regional Strategic Action Plan to Control and Manage Ship Ballast Water and Invasive Aquatic Species.

In February the IMO, the UN agency responsible for navegational safety and the prevention of marine pollution, adopted a new International Convention for the Control and Management of Ship Ballast Water and Sediments. The goal is to reduce the undesirable transfer of exotic and pathogenic species present in ballast water carried aboard ships and normally used to ensure their stability.

Through the Ministry of Environment's Secretariat of Environmental Quality, Brazil participates in the Global Management Program for Ballast Water (GloBallast), elaborated by the IMO to help developing countries deal with the problem, for the purpose of implementing the new regulations. This week's encounter will debate and attempt a regional unification of understandings that are underway in the participating countries, especially those involving the Mercosur Working Sub-group.

Ballast water is essential to the security of modern navegational operations, providing balance and stability to ships without cargo. This practice, however, can cause serious ecological, economic, and health problems, since the ballast may contain toxic algae, pathogenic species such as the cholera bacterium, and exotic species such as the golden mussel, which is spreading across the rivers of Southern Brazil and the Pantanal flood plains and is also present in Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.

Translator: David Silberstein